Earthlings, page 7
I felt reassured. The warm breath he exhaled tickled my shoulder.
“Have you ever had the feeling that you want to get inside someone else’s skin?”
“I never thought about it,” he said, his face still pressed against my shoulder.
“Can I come closer?” I asked, clinging to him.
Yuu thought a moment, then said, “Yes. You can come as close as you like, Natsuki.”
I clung to the shirt inside his parka. Even so, it still felt too distant, so I undid the buttons and rubbed my cheek directly on his skin.
“Do you feel a little closer now?”
I pressed my ear against his chest and heard his heartbeat.
“I can hear your voice coming from inside you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. When you talk, your muscles move, and your voice carries from inside.”
“Sounds weird.”
Yuu’s laugh sounded from inside his skin. Inside his skin his body was making sounds. I desperately wanted to find my way in there.
“I want to get even closer,” I murmured deliriously.
“Even more?” he said, sounding a little put out.
I took off my blouse and underwear and clung to him.
“Now I feel a little closer than before.”
“I’m glad.”
Yuu’s body warmth enveloped me. I felt his veins wriggling beneath the soft skin of his wrist.
“I want to meet the Yuu inside here. I want to go inside your skin,” I murmured.
“Natsuki, you keep saying that, but how can you get any closer than you already are?”
If we kissed, we could go inside the skin. That’s probably why grown-ups kissed. It had never occurred to me that there was such an animal-like meaning in the romantic kisses I’d read about in girls’ manga.
But my mouth had already been killed, so I couldn’t kiss.
“Can we kiss with anything other than mouths?” I asked.
“How about foreheads? Or cheeks?” he said.
“But wouldn’t you have to use your mouth to do that?”
“Oh, right.”
Just then another part of Yuu’s body where his internal organs were exposed came to mind.
“Yuu, if you put your organ inside my body, I’ll be able to get into your skin, won’t I?”
“My organ?”
When I explained what I meant, he looked shocked.
“But that’s sex, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s why I said from the start that I wanted to do sex.”
Even as I said this, I was scared. What if Yuu’s penis was dirty like Mr. Igasaki’s?
But when he took his clothes off, it looked completely different. It was pale and looked just like a plant sprout. I was relieved.
“If you put that into my body, will I be able to get inside your skin?”
Yuu looked at me questioningly. “I don’t know. Is it even possible?” he said nervously.
Together we searched for the organ that was supposed to be between my legs. We somehow found it and together used our hands to part the membrane and open the hole. We slowly stuck Yuu’s organ into it.
Then something strange happened.
Even though we were only joined by our organs, I was swimming inside Yuu’s body.
“I got there! I’m inside your skin, Yuu!” I murmured, my voice hoarse. Yuu looked as though he was in pain.
Little by little we stopped talking and were just breathing. We were both swimming in each other’s bodies. The insects chirred and the grass swayed in time with our breathing.
“I feel like I’ve come a long way away,” I somehow managed to tell him. “I feel like I’ve come to a really far-off nearby place with you.”
Yuu seemed to be drowning inside me. Transparent saliva dripped from his wide-open mouth. I touched the water falling from him.
Ever since I was born I had wanted to come here I thought. I had reached a place that was not Akishina or that white town where I lived or inside a spaceship, but much farther away.
Relief was winning out over pain. Our organs were blending together and making the sound of water. In our bellies, we were quietly eating each other’s body heat.
I could hear the rhythmic sound of Yuu snoring. Without realizing, we had both dozed off.
Taking care not to wake him, I quietly sat up. The organ sprouting from Yuu slipped out of me.
I reached a hand into my backpack.
In there was the medicine that I sometimes stole from Mom’s bag. The pills she took when she couldn’t sleep. I always stole two tablets at a time. I had been collecting them in an empty sherbet candy pack where nobody would find them.
Soon my entire body, not just my mouth, would be killed, and I would become a tool for grown-ups. I had decided some time ago that I would die before I let that happen.
When we left home I had made up my mind to never go back. If I died now, then for my funeral they would probably just open up Grandpa’s grave and bury me together with him. That would be far more convenient for the grown-ups than having to dig a new grave or cremate me.
The transparent candy pack was half full of the tablets, which looked just like the original sherbet candies. I shook them out onto my hand and tried to swallow them together with some juice.
“Natsuki?” I heard Yuu say in a small voice. “What did you just put in your mouth?”
Candies, I wanted to say, but my mouth was too full of tablets and juice to answer.
When I turned around, Yuu’s face was pale. He stuck his fingers into my mouth and prised some of the tablets out.
“Spit them all out!” he shouted, apparently realizing they weren’t candies. “Natsuki, come on! Spit them out! Now!”
I felt him stick his fingers in my mouth again and remove some more of the half-dissolved tablets.
Saliva welled up in my mouth, and when I tried to swallow it he yelled at me furiously, “Don’t swallow!”
Terrified, I meekly froze with the saliva still in my mouth.
Yuu passed me the bottle of fruit juice and said harshly, “Wash your mouth out with this, and spit all of it out. Don’t swallow even a drop of it.”
I took a mouthful of juice, rinsed my mouth out, and spat onto the grass.
“Did you swallow any of it? Even a bit?” he asked me several times, to be sure. I shook my head. “Mitsuko did the same thing one time,” he said quietly. “She’d been given medicine by the hospital, and she swallowed it all in one go.”
“Aunt Mitsuko did?” I finally managed to say.
Yuu nodded. “That’s why I have to become a tool, so that Mitsuko can survive.”
“Yuu,” I said, my voice breaking. “When will you be able to go back to outer space?”
He looked down. “I probably won’t ever be able to go back. I can’t find the spaceship no matter how hard I look.” His face was covered in the dark night, and I couldn’t see it very well. “We have to do whatever it takes to survive, Natsuki.”
“Until when?” I muttered, repressing the urge to cry. “How long do we have to just survive? When will we be able to live rather than just focusing on surviving?”
“When we grow up. Then we’ll be able to live.”
“Really?”
“Definitely.”
I felt like saying that Aunt Mitsuko still seemed to be surviving rather than living, but I swallowed my words.
“I want you to promise me you’ll survive until then.”
“Okay . . . I promise.”
Relieved, Yuu looked up. Just then we were blinded by a bright light.
“What do you two think you’re doing?” I heard my sister scream.
We huddled together, still naked.
“Over here! Quick!”
There were loud footsteps. Circles of light descended on us.
For some reason I felt absolutely calm. Next to me, Yuu seemed calm too. He narrowed his eyes against the dazzling light but didn’t make the slightest movement.
The half-crazed adults came running toward us. “What the . . . What the heck are you doing?” a flustered Uncle Teruyoshi managed to wring out, his voice hoarse.
“Don’t you have sex, Uncle?” I said and immediately felt a sharp shock on my cheek. I looked up and realized Dad had hit me.
“Get them back to the house and lock them up!”
Yuu and I were ripped apart, and I was thrown into the storehouse. I briefly caught sight of him by the rice fields being beaten as they dragged him off.
All the aunts and uncles, plus Mom and Dad, were more upset than I’d ever seen them before. I found it all ridiculous.
“Stay here and be quiet for a while!” Dad yelled.
Resisting the urge to burst out laughing, I said, “I’m not the one yelling. It’s you and the other grown-ups.”
“Don’t answer back! You can stay here until morning to calm down. As soon as it’s light we’re taking you back home.”
“Dad, why are you all making such a fuss?”
“What did you say?” Mom sputtered behind him.
“What’s wrong with me and Yuu having sex?!”
“Because . . . because you’re just children!”
“Why shouldn’t children have sex? There are plenty of grown-ups who want to have sex with children. So why is it wrong if they’re both children?”
“Natsuki!”
Dad hit me on the head. I lost my balance and fell on the storehouse floor, but even then I laughed.
“You’re disgusting!” my sister yelled from behind Mom. “You’re only kids. And you’re cousins too!”
“Natsuki, stay in here and reflect on what you’ve done,” Mom said in an admonishing tone.
“I don’t need to reflect on anything. And I’m not scared of the dark either.”
Mom shrieked and lunged at me, but Dad restrained her.
“Best lock her up for a while. Maybe by morning she’ll have come to her senses.”
The door of the storehouse slammed shut, and I was left in the pitch-black. I could hear Mom and Dad’s voices outside.
“Why on earth . . . and when the funeral has only just taken place . . .”
“We won’t bring her here again. We must never let her see Yuu again.”
“I’ve always thought they were a problem, those two. It’s so gross!” my sister’s voice rang out loud and clear.
“Natsuki’s become rebellious all of a sudden.”
“She has bad friends at school. After all, she’s not the sort of child to know about that sort of thing.”
It was ludicrous. Grown-ups used children to satisfy their sexual desires, yet the very idea of children having sex of their own volition sent them into a total fit. It was laughable. They themselves were just society’s tools, after all! But my womb was still all mine. My body would belong to me alone until grown-ups killed me.
“I don’t suppose she could be pregnant . . .”
“No way!”
The aunts were up in arms. Actually, I’d be glad if I was. But Yuu probably hadn’t yet experienced the “spermarche” we’d learned about at school. His body was completely free of that sticky fluid that had come out of Mr. Igasaki.
The grown-ups, who did what society wanted of them, were shaken by those of us who did not.
The grown-ups had become anesthetized and seemed unable to remember what life had been like before. They all seemed to be under some kind of spell.
I stayed in the dark, unable to sleep until dawn came.
The storehouse door opened, and my parents and sister came in carrying our luggage. They grabbed my arms and stood me up.
“We’re going home.”
It was just beginning to get light. I wanted to ask where Yuu was, but I knew they’d never tell me.
I was dragged out barefoot, my feet covered with dirt.
“What about my shoes?”
My black loafers were thrown at me without a word.
My thighs and knees were still covered in dirt too. Dad was always really fussy about us being clean when we got in his car, but today he just pushed me in without a word.
Mom and Kise sat either side of me on the back seat. Once the car set off I wouldn’t be able to escape, but Mom was gripping my arm anyway, so hard the bone hurt.
The car started. I glanced back at the house. I could see someone standing in the window, but I didn’t know who it was.
We drove along the expressway in silence. When my sister said, “I have to go to the bathroom,” we pulled into a service area.
“I need to go too.”
Mom took me to the toilet and waited outside the door. “Don’t get any funny ideas now.”
When I went into the cubicle, I took off my left shoe. I was thinking back to when we used to play treasure hunt with Yota and the others. A seashell or pebble would be hidden somewhere in the house and everyone would hunt for it. Yuu was the best at hiding the treasure, and I was number one at finding it.
Ever since I’d put my shoes on that morning, I’d thought that one of them felt funny. I took the insole out. As I’d guessed, there was a treasure from Yuu there. He’d hidden it last night.
Marriage Pledge
We hereby pledge the following:
1) Don’t hold hands with anyone else.
2) Wear your ring when you go to sleep.
3) Survive, whatever it takes.
Natsuki Sasamoto
Yuu Sasamoto
It was the pledge we’d made when we got married last year. Yuu had kept it safe. Scribbled in the margin in Yuu’s writing was: “Keep your promise, remember!”
With my back to the toilet door, I closed my eyes and crouched down. Behind my eyelids was darkness. The sensation of connecting with Yuu’s organ yesterday lingered between my legs.
The back of my eyelids was the same color as the universe in which Yuu and I had together submerged ourselves. I kept staring into the darkness, barely suppressing the urge to cry out.
CHAPTER 3
Ifelt something on my ankle and looked down thinking it was a bug, but it was just the laces of my sneaker. I couldn’t be bothered to put down the supermarket bags I was carrying in each hand, so I decided to leave my laces undone and started walking again.
I was on my way back to the condo by the station where I now lived, about a fifteen-minute walk from the house I had grown up in.
I got married three years ago, at the age of thirty-one. My parents had urged me and my husband to rent a condo by the station in Mirai New Town in Chiba where I was born and raised. I had resisted at first since it was inconvenient for commuting into Tokyo and also because I found the lack of change in my life depressing, but now I felt it was convenient in its own way, being located close to the station and supermarket.
I should have bought the mineral water online as I usually did I thought, adjusting my grip on the shopping bags as the plastic handles cut into my palms. I’d seen it was on sale and had picked up two bottles.
The breeze blowing in from the balcony that morning felt chilly so I’d worn a light trench coat, but now I was too hot. The sun was still strong even though it was already almost October.
When I finally got home, my husband was out on the balcony tending to the plants. He peeked his head around the curtain to greet me.
“This one with a thick trunk has gotten pretty dried out.”
“You don’t need to water that one until spring. I read in a book that when it gets cold, it sheds all its leaves and hibernates, and when spring comes around it puts out new shoots.”
“Oh, really? Plants are incredible!”
My husband was a meek guy and easily impressed. He gently touched the trunk with a respectful look, as though he were standing before the bronze statue of some great personage.
“You wouldn’t believe what plants are like in Akishina! They’re so rampant there you can easily be swallowed up by them. You have to constantly tend to the house and vegetable gardens or they’ll immediately succumb to the force of nature.”
“I never get tired of hearing about Akishina. It just sounds so amazing! So different from Tokyo. Your stories of your grandparents’ house are like a dream. Someday I really want to go there.”
He loved it when I talked about Akishina. He came in from the balcony.
“Tell me more!” he said happily. “Oh, I know. Tell me about the silkworm room again.”
“Well, I only ever heard about it from my uncle. I never actually saw it myself. But the silkworms were started off in an upstairs room. The room isn’t all that big, but according to what my uncle told me, the worms were kept in rows of bamboo baskets in there and fed mulberry leaves. They grew really fast, so before long the whole house would be full of them.”
He listened entranced, as though I was telling him a fairy tale. I always ended up feeling as though the stories I’d heard from my uncle were actually my own experiences, and I would get carried away talking about them.
“Oh, and in spring, they would always buy five chicks to raise for eggs, and after two or three years they would wring their necks and eat them at Obon or New Year.”
“You must have eaten those chickens at Obon, right, Natsuki?”
“Maybe, but I don’t think they kept any chickens at the Akishina house when I was little.”
“Oh, it’s wonderful, like the gift of life itself! I’ve only ever seen meat wrapped up in packs in the supermarket. Tokyo’s awful. You can’t learn any of the things that are important to being human there.”
He seemed to have the intense longing for the countryside that was typical of city people. My family never mentioned Akishina, so when he listened so intently to me I felt soothed by nostalgia.
As we chatted, I put a pan of water on to boil.
“What are you eating today?”
