Earthlings, page 14
Evidently everything we’d told him had washed over him. He was only listening to the voice of society. Yuu’s propriety was, to me, proof that his brainwashing was complete. I envied him.
“I’ll go. I’m the freeloader here, after all.”
“But you can’t drive, Natsuki. There’s only one bus a day, so it’s simplest if I go,” he said irritably and went to the washroom.
Given that my husband and I were causing Yuu so much trouble, the least I could do was prepare breakfast I thought. I was just on my way to the kitchen when I heard a car pull up outside. I went to see who it was, thinking my husband had probably forgotten something, to see an unfamiliar orange vehicle.
A suntanned man got out. Noticing me, he approached with a dubious look on his face.
“Yota?” The name came to mind the moment I saw his face. He was Uncle Teruyoshi’s eldest son, one of the kids I’d run around with during the summer here.
“Natsuki?” He looked surprised.
I nodded.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came with my husband to stay a while.”
“What about Yuu?”
“He’s inside.”
Yota looked troubled.
Just then Yuu came out. “Hey, Yota!” he called, looking relieved. “Good timing. Will you have breakfast? I’m going out straight afterward.”
“Sure, but what about Natsuki’s husband?”
“You just missed him. Some business came up in Tokyo, and he won’t be back tonight, so I thought it best to go down to the valley to stay in a hotel.”
“Yes, that seems best. But what’s up with him? For all that you two are cousins, going out and leaving you alone together . . . That’s not normal, is it? Surely he should have taken Natsuki with him?”
“That’s what I thought too,” Yuu said, looking reassured.
Yota’s sense of propriety seemed to resonate with Yuu, and this enabled them to really connect with each other deeply I thought. Yuu looked far more relaxed than I’d seen him until now.
Yuu smoothly explained my husband’s sudden absence, replacing the provocative word “incest” with other words such as “work.”
“Well, I guess if that’s the case, it can’t be helped,” Yota said, apparently more or less satisfied. “How about staying at my place, Yuu? Paying for a hotel is a waste of money.”
“Well, if you don’t mind.”
Yota lived in Ueda with his wife and children. I was impressed by how well he was functioning as a Factory component.
“I’m sorry that I was a bit sharp with you earlier, Natsuki,” he said. “You know, after, er . . . what happened, the relatives stopped gathering together here for the summer. I had no idea why, and I really missed being here. Then when Granny died, everyone came again, except you. When I asked why you weren’t there, Dad told me I was old enough to know what had happened and explained what you’d done that night after Grandpa’s funeral. To be honest, I was shocked and disgusted.”
Yuu nodded as he listened to Yota. He somehow looked pleased, even though he was being told he himself was disgusting. There was no trace of the uneasy expression he wore when he was around me and my husband; he looked as though he had recovered his self-confidence. Normality was contagious, and exposure to the infection was necessary to keep up with it. Yota was probably supplying him with some of the same strain of normality as his own for the first time in a while.
“Since Yuu started living here, this place has been on my mind, and I’ve been dropping by occasionally. And then meeting you again after all this time, Natsuki, somehow those days came back to me, and I got the jitters.”
“I know, I know,” Yuu said, eagerly pouring more tea for Yota.
“Hadn’t you two met up since then?”
“No, we hadn’t been in contact at all since that night,” Yuu answered immediately.
“I don’t suppose you could,” Yota said with some emotion. “Your mom stopped visiting after that. After all, she was practically disowned by the family. I only found out about her suicide at her funeral.”
“She committed suicide?” I was shocked. My sister hadn’t told me how she’d died.
“Didn’t you know?” Yota asked, staring at me.
“Nobody told you anything either, I suppose?”
“No . . .”
“After that all the relatives fell apart, you know. I really think what we did was wrong,” Yuu muttered.
“Wrong? I suppose that’s how you see it, Yuu.”
“Anyone would!” Yuu looked me in the eye. “We were wrong.”
I gulped and was about to make a retort when Yota changed the subject and in a bright voice said, “But look how run-down Granny’s house is! The tatami floor in the altar room is looking all worn.”
“It really is! I can hardly believe that all us cousins used to play here in the living room.”
“It’s true!”
Yuu and I both chimed in.
“We always had fireworks in the garden every summer, didn’t we?”
“Wow, it’s all like a dream now.”
Yuu narrowed his eyes as if trying to remember. “You always got told off for taking two sparklers, didn’t you, Yota?”
“Yeah, those things were so lame. Remember how Dad always used to launch some big rockets for us too?”
“And those parachutes . . . remember how we used to fight over them too?”
Together we talked about our memories of that time. In the other world of the past, we really had all sat on this veranda eating watermelon. That was something you never saw these days.
The three of us had breakfast together, then Yota and Yuu drove down the mountain.
Yota was concerned about me. “Will you be okay here on your own, Natsuki?” he asked. “Do you want to come with us? You can sleep in my wife’s room.”
“She doesn’t have her husband’s permission,” Yuu said immediately. “It wouldn’t be right.”
He glared at me disdainfully. People can easily pass judgment on others when they’re protected by their own normality.
“I’ll sleep here alone,” I told Yota.
My husband returned soon after lunch the following day. I was lazing around in the kotatsu when I heard the front door open, and he came in looking pale.
“Hi Tomoya, how was it?”
“They’re after me. I have to hide right now.”
Before I could get any more information from my trembling husband, there was the sound of a car pulling up. He shrieked. I hid him in the kitchen and went outside to find not his pursuer but Yuu getting unhurriedly out of his car.
“I saw a taxi and thought it must be Tomoya’s. Is he back?”
“Well—”
Before I could answer, there was the sound of yet another car outside. When I nervously went to see who it was, this time I found a big black car.
A glowering figure alighted from the driver’s seat. I grabbed Yuu’s hand and hurriedly pulled him into the house, locking the door behind us.
“What shall we do, Yuu? It’s an envoy from the Factory chasing Tomoya.”
“Envoy?”
My husband huddled in the kitchen.
Before long, the glowering figure loomed behind the frosted glass in the door.
“Tomoya! Come on out. I know you’re in there!”
“Who is it?” Yuu whispered in my ear.
“Tomoya’s father.”
Yuu’s eyes widened. “In that case, we have to invite him in. We can’t just turn him away, you know.”
He turned to the door. “Hold on a moment, sir! I’m the current resident of this house. I’ll open up right away.”
He opened the door to see my father-in-law standing there, his face and neck tinged crimson with rage.
“Excuse me, but is my son here?” my father-in-law demanded courteously, before pushing his way in and storming through the house yelling “Tomoya!”
Eventually he dragged my husband out of the kitchen. “You stupid brat!”
It’s like a TV drama I thought as I watched him beating my husband. As a child, I’d often been amused by drama series, however serious the theme. Seeing one now being played out right before my very eyes, acted with such deep conviction, I almost burst out laughing.
“Come on, let’s keep things calm, shall we?”
Yuu was a good actor, too, playing the part of someone desperately trying to get a father to calm down and stop beating his son. He blended completely into the scene being brought to life by my father-in-law.
“Stop, please! Help!” my husband screamed pathetically, making a dash for where I stood as Yuu held my father-in-law back.
“Do you really want me to save you?” There was a grass-cutting scythe by the front door. “Do you, Tomoya? If you really want me to save you, then I will do my very best.”
My husband realized what was in my line of sight and quickly shook his head. “No, no, actually I don’t really want you to help me.”
“Really? Okay, fine.”
I watched as my father-in-law shook off Yuu and again grabbed my husband, resuming the family drama. “Stop! Someone help me!” my husband screamed. “You worthless piece of shit!” my father-in-law roared, absorbed in his script as he began beating my husband again.
One of my husband’s teeth flew out and landed at my feet. It was covered in blood. I picked up the bloody tooth and put it in my pocket.
“Please stop!” Yuu implored. “Calm down!” There at my husband’s side, he was playing the part of the wife better than I was.
Putting together what my father-in-law was yelling, my husband had actually gone to his elder brother’s house and, with all sincerity, proposed committing an incestuous act with him. He had apparently fervently explained that by not having a romantic relationship but instead committing an incestuous act, he might be able to become something nonhuman.
My brother-in-law worried that he might be involved with a religious cult and secretly recorded their conversation on his iPhone as he tried to soothe him and treated him to a meal. When my husband got drunk and fell asleep on the sofa, my brother-in-law went to see their father to ask for advice on how to handle the situation. My husband was then woken from sleep by a furious phone call from his father and in a panic fled back to Akishina by bullet train then taxi. My father-in-law had contacted my parents, who gave him the address in Akishina, and he had easily caught up with his son.
Once my father-in-law had finished beating my husband, he dragged us outside and pushed us into his car. “Both of you, you should know better at your age. Pathetic!” he said, stepping angrily on the gas.
I was being returned to the Factory, just like I had been that summer’s day in my childhood. The normal people were once again bringing me back to that town.
I glanced out of the window and saw Yuu standing rooted to the spot outside the storehouse staring after us openmouthed.
His figure rapidly receded into the distance as the car sped off.
CHAPTER 6
Back in the Factory, a third-degree interrogation was awaiting us.
My husband’s parents had been in touch with my parents, and we were immediately separated for cross-examination. My husband was hauled off to his parents’ house in Tokyo, and I was delivered to my parents’ house in Mirai New Town in Chiba.
I’d been kind of hoping I could finally get them to brainwash me, but for the sake of my husband I maintained my silence. Every day I was interrogated by Mom and Dad and often by my sister, too, but I kept my mouth shut.
“You’re so stubborn, Natsuki,” Mom said with a sigh.
One night, a week after the interrogations first started, Mom produced a bottle of brandy and, with cloying overfamiliarity, invited me to sit with her.
“Fancy a drink?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Don’t be like that! Now and then it’s good for us women to have a drink and talk. Don’t you agree?” she insisted, pouring some brandy over ice.
I had rarely seen Mom touch alcohol, but from the way she started in on it eagerly I thought she was actually probably quite good at holding her drink. Reluctantly I took a sip from the glass placed in front of me. I couldn’t taste it, but I liked the cold sensation from the ice.
After a while Mom blurted out, “I met up with Tomoya’s parents recently, and they told me that you two aren’t, er, intimate with each other.”
I was taken aback. I’d never expected my husband to spill the beans about our particular marital arrangement.
“It really won’t do, you know. That sort of thing is so important for a couple. I’ve seen on TV that some young people are, um, intimate a lot at first and stop later, but from what I hear you two haven’t even done it once.”
I heard a rattling and glanced down at my hand to see that it was shaking. It felt strange to see my fingertips trembling like that.
“And it’s a wife’s duty to be intimate, you know. Tomoya finds it hard to hold down a job, doesn’t he? You have to support him in that regard, Natsuki. You’re his wife!”
My body was not my own. I had always been secretly shirking the role I had been assigned as a tool of society. The time had come for me to be taken to task for this, I thought.
I had been half resigned to and half longing for the day when the Earthlings would gang up and brainwash me. But I had never imagined that time would come so soon or in this form.
When I said I wanted to talk to my husband, Mom looked pleased.
“I’m sure you do. You’ve already been apart for a week now, and you are a couple, after all.” She rubbed my back. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Make sure you get intimate with him, all right? Tomoya’s a late developer, so you’ll have to guide him and show him what to do. Teach him the basics. As casually as you can and tactfully, too, so as not to hurt his pride. That’s the duty of a charming wife, you know!”
The next day I went to my husband’s parents’ place in Setagaya and rang the doorbell. My mother-in-law opened the door to me, all smiles.
“Natsuki, how nice to see you. Your parents called. They said you could stay here tonight, then tomorrow you can both go home together.”
I was shown through to the living room and together we drank tea.
“What about Tomoya . . . ?”
“Ah. Well, you might be a bit shocked when you see him.”
The living room door slid open and my father-in-law came in. Behind him was my husband. It appeared he had been quite severely beaten, with bruises on his face and arms, and his hair had been cropped like a monk’s.
My father-in-law glowered at me. “So you’re here,” he said. “What the hell are you and Tomoya up to? You haven’t done it even once! That’s worse than being barren.”
“Oh really, you mustn’t use that word. It’s considered discriminatory these days,” my mother-in-law admonished him as she poured him some tea. “Natsuki’s a new type of woman from a younger generation. You really must be more considerate you know.” She smiled at me.
“You know very well how much I hate people who insist on their rights while neglecting their duty,” he said irritably and took a sip of the tea. “Too bitter. Pour it again.”
My mother-in-law forced a smile and put some more hot water into the teapot. “If you speak to her like that, she’ll become even more stubborn, won’t she now?” she said, her eyes on me.
“Anyway, you two get going and produce a child. If you won’t have relations, then annul the marriage. You’re abnormal, the both of you.”
“That’s up to us to decide,” my monk-headed husband said in a small voice.
My mother-in-law sighed. “Look, Tomoya. Do it a lot and make a family, then once the relationship has cooled, you play around outside the marriage. That’s the way it is for lots of couples, isn’t it? Playing around is a man’s reward. Your father has had his fair share, haven’t you dear? But really, not even doing it at all from the start, that’s not what marriage is about, is it now?”
“In Los Angeles, a lack of marital relations is considered a fine reason for divorce, you know. How about trying counseling?”
Just why Los Angeles had suddenly been brought into it I didn’t know. My father-in-law was now sipping the fresh tea my mother-in-law had poured for him, his face grave.
“That’s right. You too, Natsuki. You married into our family, and if you don’t fulfill your duty as a wife, you’ll be causing problems for us.”
“You’re out of your minds,” my husband muttered.
That night, when I woke up to go to the bathroom, I overheard my mother- and father-in-law talking.
“At her age, is she even still getting periods? Won’t they have stopped by now?”
“Oh really, dear. Her periods should be fine. She is getting a bit old to give birth for the first time, though.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to split them up and find him a new wife?”
“The thing is, Tomoya has always been a difficult child. He’s a late developer too. Maybe we should give it a year and see how things go. If she isn’t pregnant by then, we can think about what to do. Unlike women, men can start a family later in life as long as their partner is young.”
Being treated crudely as a tool for society was clearer than all that talk of falling in love, and actually I wasn’t upset by it at all. I even began to feel vindicated. My parents-in-law were revealing that beneath the usual Baby Factory tendency to sugarcoat everything the objective was simply to manufacture babies.
My husband was far more disturbed by his parents’ attitude. He again went out of his way to defend me at breakfast.
“Natsuki is really special. There’s only one of her kind on Earth.”
“My, my, you are very attached to her, aren’t you?” his mother said. “Hmm. I’d say she’s certainly especially strange.” She tittered and put some rice into my husband’s bowl.
