Life Ceremony, page 12
Sanae tilted her head uncomprehendingly. “What?”
“I vomited such a lot and was in such a disgusting state, yet you kept rubbing my back . . .” Yuka said weakly.
“You’re not disgusting at all!” Sanae said with a smile.
“And earlier too, while everyone else was watching from a distance, you came to help me . . .” Yuka went on, tears in her eyes. “That guy was my ex-boyfriend. I broke up with him, but he won’t take no for an answer, and he keeps hanging around. I’m actually scared of him.”
“Really?”
“Lately he’s been lying in wait for me at work, too.”
Sanae pictured the man. He’d been acting a bit weirdly, but that had made him look alive. She smiled, recalling his shoulders trembling under his black shirt.
“Well, he might be waiting outside your place, so shall I come with you?”
“I can’t possibly put you out any more than I already have. I’ll take a taxi to a friend’s place. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay.”
Sanae flagged down a taxi and got Yuka settled in the back seat. Yuka bowed her head deeply, holding a handkerchief over her mouth.
“Thank you so much for everything, Sanae. Really.”
Sanae watched as the taxi departed, then went back into the restaurant. Emiko and the others came up to her, looking worried.
“How’s Yuka? Is she all right?”
“Yes. She seemed to be feeling much better. I just saw her off in a taxi.”
“She didn’t even last an hour. Maybe she hadn’t been feeling well to begin with.”
“She appeared to be drinking more than usual.”
“Mmmm. She did look as though she was drowning her sorrows, didn’t she? It looks like she’s caught up in some trouble with that weird man we saw earlier. Thanks for looking after her, Sanae. You always help everyone in trouble. It’s so good of you. Well, the night’s still young, how about we get back to the party?”
“Sorry, but I need to go to the bathroom first,” Sanae said, and headed for the toilet.
Approaching the toilet bowl where Yuka had been crouching, she could still sense the lingering smell of Yuka’s viscera. She pulled down her underwear and sat on the toilet, noticing that it was still warm from when Yuka had been clutching it.
Sanae gently took a deep breath and strained her lower abdomen. She wasn’t very good at eliminating waste. Even when she wanted to urinate or defecate, it seemed like someone else’s business, and she didn’t feel any urgency, so she couldn’t manage it without straining.
After a while, a warm liquid finally started streaming from her body. Having somehow managed to get it all out, she stood up and turned to look at the toilet bowl. Maybe she’d overdone it with the vitamin supplements, for the liquid was an abnormally vivid yellow, as though paint had been dissolved in it. There was absolutely no hint of a smell of animal body waste coming from it.
However hard she gazed at it, it simply looked like a bucket of yellow paint, and she couldn’t detect any trace of a life-form emanating from it.
Nor was there any sensation in her body of feeling refreshed after elimination. It just felt like some of the colored water flowing around her body had left it.
She sighed and flushed the toilet, and the lemon-colored water was sucked away.
She went back to her seat and started gathering her things. “Sorry, but I’m going home too,” she told Emiko. “I’m not feeling very well.”
“Oh dear, are you drunk too, Sanae? But you hardly drank anything!”
“I feel a bit like I’ve got a cold coming on. I shouldn’t have pushed myself to come tonight.”
“Are you okay? Shall I see you home?”
“I’ve just got a bit of a temperature, I’ll be okay. Sorry, but here’s my and Yuka’s share of the bill. Thanks, Emiko.”
Having handed the money to Emiko, Sanae put her thin cardigan over her shoulders and left the restaurant. As she adjusted her bag on her shoulder, she recalled the sweat oozing from the man and the vomit that had spurted from Yuka’s mouth.
She took out her handkerchief, which smelled faintly of Yuka’s viscera. She stroked her own lips, but only cold air came out. Irritated by the way it wasn’t even damp, she pushed her index finger into her mouth. But all that was there was a fluid like rainwater, devoid of any mucus.
She hung her head, eventually managing to take a deep breath and set off at a run through the streets of the nighttime entertainment district.
To begin with, she was just trotting along, but gradually she picked up speed. Water gushed out of her, and oxygen and carbon dioxide began furiously coming and going in her nose and mouth.
Holding her hand to her chest, she could feel her heart beating violently. However, just as the night before, this frenzied heart did not feel like it was her own, and she could only think of it as a separate creature living parasitically off her. The sensation that she was merely a concrete receptacle housing it grew even stronger.
This wasn’t going to work, she thought with a little sigh, and stopped running.
Without realizing it, she had been headed for the office district where her company was located, and when she wiped away the body fluid dripping from her face and looked up, she saw standing before her a pale gray office building.
Looking up at it, Sanae gulped despite herself. It was the very image of Sanae herself right now.
She glimpsed flashes of dark red and pale white figures inside its rows of windows. These were the building’s innards. She was mesmerized by the wriggling flesh in the windows.
Breathing and pulsing life-forms were moving around inside the rectangular concrete block. It was itself a quiet animal. It wasn’t a receptacle in which the creatures lived, but one single large life-form.
Sanae touched her chest. Inside it, her heart was beating, its vibrations reaching her skin.
Concrete and people were not opposites. All the people crawling around in the world were the shared inner organs of all the gray buildings like herself. This was what Sanae was thinking as she unsteadily approached the building.
As she touched the pale gray surface, the cold of the concrete seeped into her. The backs of Sanae’s pale, pasty hands looked as though they were blending into the concrete. Yet she no longer felt that they were inorganic matter. Whether it was due to the vibrations of her viscera or from cars passing outside, the surface of the building was quivering slightly. Feeling affection for this building-animal, she kept stroking the concrete with her white hands, slowly savoring its vibrations.
“Are you okay, Sanae?” Hearing Emiko’s voice, Sanae came back to herself. “You look really out of it!”
Out of it? Maybe she was, Sanae thought as she returned Emiko’s smile.
She was having lunch with her colleagues in the same place as usual—something that had been totally familiar to her until yesterday, but now she felt that she was in a completely different place.
Her friends, who until yesterday had been human, were sitting there right in front of her possessed of an entirely different aspect. They were now a single mass of flesh and blood enclosed in a thin membrane, squirming and pulsing, emitting sounds and giving off heat.
Sanae looked slowly around the room. Within the building’s inner walls, she was of one flesh. She looked down at her arms, which seemed somewhat inorganic and incongruous with her surroundings, as if she were a fragment of plastic or an artificial organ that had mistakenly been swallowed up and become part of the building’s internal organs. But she didn’t feel the sort of alienation she’d felt until yesterday. “I am a small building, so the internal organs before me now are my organs too,” she murmured to herself. Whether external walls or internal organs, they were all one single form, one large creature.
“Um, Sanae, has something good happened?” asked one girl, peering into Sanae’s pale face. “Did you get a boyfriend maybe?”
“I was thinking the same! It’s like gentleness is overflowing from your eyes even more than usual.”
“What are you talking about?” Emiko asked, laughing. “But I kind of get what you mean,” she added, peering into Sanae’s eyes.
“Oh, no. Nothing in particular has happened,” Sanae said. “Maybe it’s the effect of that DVD you gave me, Emiko.”
“Oh that! Did you like it?”
“It was amazing.”
“What DVD? A movie?” one girl asked, leaning forward, so Emiko began telling her about the exercises.
In her trance, Sanae watched these two lumps of flesh draw close to each other. Their quivering pale crimson flesh, visible through thin membranes, was so close they might blend into one. With every breath, they faintly expanded and contracted, evidence that they were alive. Yet it wasn’t merely evidence of their life, but also of the heartbeat of the large building around them.
Sanae stroked her own dry surface. She could feel the flesh within it, where organs the color of blood were pulsing just like the organs before her eyes. The very thought gave her a rush of affection for her own insides, which until now she’d been convinced were parasitic.
“Oh look, Sanae’s smiling again! No way it’s that DVD. It’s got to be a new boyfriend!”
“Right? Come on, Sanae, you’ve got to tell us!”
The membrane-covered fleshes all leaned toward her. Sanae laughed out loud in spite of herself. This triggered the internal organs, which also started to give off sounds, their flesh trembling. The sounds they made reverberated around the room, echoing throughout the building.
Leaving work, Sanae was being slowly spewed out of the office building when she noticed the man in the black shirt standing outside. She gave him a friendly smile as she went up to say hello.
The man was taken aback, and his shoulders shook as he looked at her.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead toward his eyeballs, which were darting here and there, trying to escape from her curious gaze. Sanae took out her handkerchief to wipe away the sweat.
The man hastily averted his face.
“You’re getting sweat in your eyes,” Sanae told him gently.
He opened his mouth, but then he heard people’s voices coming out of the building, and abruptly he ran off.
Sanae was left standing there, clutching the handkerchief in her hand.
Realizing that her cell phone was vibrating inside her bag, she took it out and opened the screen. An email had come from Yuka.
Hi, Sanae. Thank you so much for yesterday. If you’re free tomorrow evening, would you mind meeting up somewhere? There’s something I’d like to tell you.
Sanae replied that she was free, glanced in the direction where the man had run off, and set off toward the station.
During lunch break the next day, Sanae skipped lunch and instead went to the bathroom, put the lid down on the toilet bowl, and sat on top of it.
She took out a compact mirror and looked in it to see her face there, grayish as ever. It had a number of holes here and there, the inner corners of her eyes, her nostrils and mouth. Peering closely at the corners of her eyes or mouth, she could see within them flesh the color of blood. She had never thought of these things as her own, but now they felt like charming creatures that had slipped inside her.
Did hermit crab shells also think so fondly of the life-forms that crept inside them? She left the toilet cubicle and was on her way back to her desk when she suddenly stopped in the corridor and looked out the window at the building’s entrance below. Little by little, internal organs were spilling out of it. She felt as though she and the building were connected, and that it was her own feet they were leaving through. Maybe the internal organs squirming inside her would similarly flow out and be sucked into other buildings. At night, all the flesh would leave and it would become simply a concrete box standing motionless, waiting for the internal organs to come again the next day.
She could have watched those internal organs outside all day, but suddenly she felt a tap on her back.
“So here you are, Sanae! I was looking for you. I called your phone too.”
She turned to see Emiko looking at her with concern.
“I’ve already had lunch. What have you been doing?”
“I’m sorry, I was just spacing out.”
“Sanae, are you okay? The day before yesterday you had a cold, didn’t you? If you’re not feeling well, you should go home.”
“I’m fine! In fact, I’m feeling even better than usual.”
Emiko tilted her head slightly and looked at her questioningly.
“Sanae, there’s something even more gentle about you lately—I thought so yesterday too. Are you sure you haven’t got a boyfriend?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“Really? Well, never mind. It’s just that when you didn’t turn up to lunch, everyone was saying that you must be on the phone with your new boyfriend. And that you’re such a good person, they sometimes feel a kind of distance from you, but somehow since yesterday it feels like that wall’s come down.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, definitely! Well, be sure to give us any good news, okay? Oh look, it’s getting late. We don’t have time to be chatting here like this. You haven’t had lunch yet, have you, Sanae? You’d better hurry up before the lunch break finishes.”
“It’s okay. I’m not feeling hungry anyway.”
“Well, if you’re sure. But if you’re not feeling well, you mustn’t push yourself, okay?” Emiko said to make sure, then added, “I’m going to brush my teeth,” gave a little wave, and rushed off to the powder room.
Sanae watched her go, then looked at her own eyes reflected in the window.
Everyone, all the internal organs, took comfort in being showered in tenderness by these eyes. Taking this as proof that they were all one creature, happiness welled up in Sanae. She lightly stroked the wall of the corridor. It felt warmer than usual, as though out of fondness for the internal organs coming and going within it.
Sanae finished work right on time and went into the changing room to find that Yuka had already changed her clothes and was there waiting for her.
“I’m sorry, did I keep you waiting?” Sanae said.
“No problem.”
Sanae smiled at Yuka as she took off her uniform. “Where shall we go? Depending on what you want to talk about, maybe it’s better not to stay too close to the office.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter if anyone overhears us,” Yuka said, “but . . . it’ll be better if we can relax and talk, so why don’t you come to my place?”
“Your place?”
“Yes. Oh, right—I’m registered at work as living with my parents, but actually I’ve got a place on my own not far from here.”
“Oh, I see. Well, let’s go there, then.”
Yuka glanced around the street as they left the office. Having made sure that the man wasn’t there, she gave a small sigh and murmured, “I feel safe when I’m with you, Sanae.”
Sanae nodded, and the two of them set off to the JR station some distance away.
Sanae proceeded slowly in her utterly altered world.
She saw large white waves spreading out before her into the distance. The waves were hard and connected at the base, standing completely still, as if time had stopped. Square protrusions formed individual cocoons, and she could see organs squirming inside them. This alone was proof that this world was alive. What she’d thought of as a city until not long ago was also one large creature.
If she could never go back to the other world, it wouldn’t be a problem. Far from it, everything seemed to be going much better than before.
Spellbound by the somehow nostalgic landscape of this parallel world, Sanae heard a low murmur beside her.
“Sanae, I feel you’re even more affectionate than usual today.”
“You do? I guess you’re right . . . I feel so serene.”
“I’m so glad I decided to consult you, Sanae. I feel so relaxed just being with you.”
Hearing this, Sanae shifted her gaze to Yuka. The human being Yuka was no longer there. She was now a small stomach moving over the waves. And that, too, was her correct form.
The stomach moving over the surface of the creature eventually stopped before a small cocoon.
“This is my apartment. It’s run-down, but still.”
“It’s wonderful.”
As if knowing this was where it belonged, the stomach was sucked into the white cocoon. Sanae stood watching, entranced at the sight.
“Come on in, Sanae,” a voice came from within the cocoon.
Coming to a halt inside, the stomach started talking in a hoarse voice.
“About my ex-boyfriend—it’s not just that he’s persistent, he’s abnormal. He himself says that he’s being weird, but he still doesn’t stop. And I’m sick to death of all the emails and him lying in wait for me . . .”
As Sanae tenderly watched the trembling stomach, little by little gastric juice began to ooze from it, and drops began to flow over its surface.
“When I’m with you, Sanae, I really do feel safe and relaxed . . . I’ve been so scared all this time, worrying about it all . . .”
“I’m always looking out for you. After all—”
After all, you’re my stomach, she’d been about to say, but then stopped. She’d felt a vibration outside.
“Sanae . . . I feel you’re somehow wrapped around me.”
“You do? You can cling to me as much as you like, you know.”
“Thank you—really, I mean it . . . Oh! I’ve just been talking about myself without even offering you some tea or anything. I’m so sorry! Which do you prefer, tea or coffee?”
“Either is fine.”
“Well then, I’ll make some tea. Please wait a moment.”
