The Future Is Japanese Read online

  Maybe by then I’ll know what to do.

  The girl’s frightened inhalation warns me to halt.

  I’m about to step out from underneath the canopy’s shadow. In front of us, a lightning-struck tree has fallen across its sisters, creating a small clearing.

  Encroaching on its boundaries, dozens of yurei. Flocking. Screeching.

  It’s daytime, but shadows swarm around the ghosts, creating temporary dark. Some hold torches aloft in locks of their hair. Firelight picks out undertones of blue and green in their white kimonos. They swoop and dart like carrion-eaters, all suddenness with no grace.

  Leaders emerge into the clearing. Pass through. There are many, many more behind.

  The girl trembles. Goosebumps prick my skin.

  Any moment, they could smell us. They may already be watching behind their hair. Clawed hands could part their veils at any instant.

  Hundreds stream by until, at last, the grimacing legion is gone, shadows and firelight with them, leaving behind mist and silent trees.

  The girl starts forward into the clearing. No! I throw my arm out to stop her. She cringes as she glimpses what I’ve seen.

  One last yurei sitting on the lightning-charred stump.

  The air is so cold. My exhalations are ice.

  The yurei’s scent drifts toward us.

  Mandarin oranges.

  Relief instantly warms me. “Don’t worry,” I tell the girl. “I know this one.”

  The yurei’s head rotates toward our approach. Her body remains motionless. If she had a living neck, it would snap.

  “Thanks for your advice the other day,” I say acidly in Japanese.

  “A moment, please!” she replies in English. “Consult the police before you decide to die.”

  The girl gasps. Her expression shows fear.

  “Don’t worry,” I repeat. “This one always quotes the signs. She thinks it’s a joke.”

  Melon trembles. She braces her hands protectively across her stomach. I think but don’t say, You’re the one who wanted to meet a ghost.

  “We can’t get out,” I tell the yurei.

  She switches to Japanese. “All roads lead to Aokigahara.”

  Melon breathes raggedly. I can’t tell how much she understands.

  “Hardly anything leads to Aokigahara.”

  “All roads lead to death. Aokigahara is death. All roads lead to Aokigahara.”

  “You are not being helpful!” I reply angrily in Japanese.

  “The forest wants you.”

  “I’ve been here a hundred times! Why does it want me now?”

  I glare at the yurei. I know her pricks and pranks. She’s keeping something to herself.

  The girl breaks in, using halting Japanese. “Please! I need to find my father. Can you help me?”

  The yurei turns again, that neck-snapping turn. “Your name is Melon.”

  Her English is very bad.

  “Yes,” Melon says. She’s afraid, but it doesn’t silence her.

  The yurei calls back to me, “You come a hundred times alone and once with this one. What do you think is different?”

  Melon looks between us, confused. The Japanese is too fast for her. “Please,” she repeats. “My father’s name is Manabu. He died here.”

  “Why should I help you?” the yurei grumbles. She adds in Japanese, “She doesn’t have anything I want.”

  “She has the same thing you get from me,” I say. “She has skin that wants to live—”

  The words aren’t entirely out of my mouth before I realize what the yurei is implying.

  I gape at Melon. “What did you really come here to do?”

  Melon hasn’t understood our words, but she knows how to read my shocked eyes. She tenses. I move forward to catch her, but I’m too late. She flees.

  The yurei rises to watch her go. Her hovering form casts a sharp shadow across the lightning-struck log.

  For a moment, I’m too confused to pursue. Everything is going wrong. The trees closing in. Sayomi refusing to let go.

  “One girl wants to die,” the yurei says. “One girl is marked by a ghost. Both belong to us.”

  “What do I do? How do I get out?”

  “The trees have been waiting to claim you. They won’t let you out while they’re feeding on her.”

  “Then I’ll chop them down! Damn it! What do I do?”

  The yurei says nothing. She won’t help. She got what she wanted yesterday and now she’s watching her prank play out.

  Damn her. I run past, following Melon.

  “Please reconsider!” the yurei calls after me. “Think of your family!”

  Melon’s still walking when I find her, but she’s turned herself in circles and hasn’t made it far.

  She jumps when she feels my hand on her pack. She struggles to keep me from pulling it off, but I’m stronger and her straps are loose.

  Inside: gear, clothes, hygiene items—and there: I rattle an enormous bottle of analgesics.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Why do you think you need these?”

  I push the lid down and twist. Throw the open bottle. Pills rain down in a hyperbola.

  I grab another. Melon fights me for it. I twist free of her grip. Scatter another pill rain.

  “Do whatever you want!” she shouts. “You think I need pills? Look where we are!”

  Bottle of vodka at the bottom of the pack to wash it down. I dump it. Make some mud.

  Melon stomps off. Leaving her pack behind. Leaving me behind. I jog after. Catch her in a couple steps.

  “Poison’s not even a good way to do it. Stick to rope. It’s faster.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “I’m not giving you advice! How old are you? Sixteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you at seventeen that you think you need to come here?”

  She whips around to face me. The ferocious movement makes me stagger back.

  “You think I can’t have problems because I’m seventeen? My mother ran off. Okay? She ran off to Chicago when I was seven and left me in Omaha with my grandparents. They don’t even like kids. Last year, she comes home just long enough to give me my father’s name. Only time I’ve seen her since I was twelve. So I take the money I’ve been saving for college and I buy a trip here. To meet my father’s family. But they don’t want me either! Who am I to them? Some kid from another country? I’m here to find my father!”

  Spit from her shouting lands on my face. I’m too stunned to answer. Not used to people emptying themselves. Not to me, the woman with the onryo who spends too much time with the dead.

  At last, I think of words. “You think you’re going to find family here?” I gesture at the trees. “Make a family of ghosts?”

  “Why not? You’re fucking one.”

  She can see that hurts. She’s happy to have landed a punch.

  “Leave me alone,” she says.

  “The trees won’t let me.” I hate to say it, but it’s true. “I already half belong to them. They won’t let me leave without you.”

  Doubt flickers across Melon’s face. She didn’t intend to force me to die with her.

  I push at her weakness. “Your father. Will you promise not to kill yourself if I help you find him?”

  She hesitates. Nods. I can see from the flicker in her eyes that it’s not a real promise. She’ll still kill herself to stay with him if she can.

  As long as she’s with me, I’ve got time to convince her otherwise.

  We retrieve her pack and walk in silence.

  The girl’s shoes squeak as we walk uphill. Our unwashed smell clings to our clothes.

  Why do I care if Melon dies and takes me with her? I’ve been here seven years, flirting with death. Letting death kiss me. Waiting for her to bring me to a height I can’t safely leap down from.

  I always knew Sayomi would take me eventually, but not now, I never wanted it now. Seven years of soon, later, someday
.

  Maybe I never wanted to die at all.

  We tread on springy feathers of lichen. Creepers wind around tree trunks like yurei hair, beautiful and confining. Fingerlike branches point in a thousand different directions.

  Between trees, a shadowed mass blooms where there should be day.

  The horde of ghosts.

  I grab Melon’s elbow. I know where to find her father.

  Ghosts’ shadows blacken the narrow, winding twists between trees. We run toward them as they stream toward us. Within moments, we’re engulfed in dark.

  I scream into the mass of ghosts. “We’re looking for her father! You know where he is!”

  Torchlight illuminates Melon’s upturned face. She’s all flickers and contrasts.

  Something changes in the flow of ghosts. They move around us as if we’re an island, leaving an empty space. A yurei floats into the opening.

  Melon’s father.

  He wears the button-down shirt from the picture, faded and grayed. Too-long slacks drape over his feet—if he has feet. Empty cuffs hang two feet above the ground.

  He doesn’t have tumbling hair like traditional yurei, but what hair he has obscures his eyes. Impossible to tell where he’s looking. What he’s thinking.

  “Manabu?” Melon’s voice shakes.

  The ghost’s words scrape against each other like pumice stones. “I was alone.”

  “Speak in English?” Melon pleads.

  “They didn’t think I could do it. They thought I was a coward.”

  “Please. I know you used to speak English with my mother. She can’t even say domo arigato.”

  “No one would hire me. I spent all day in the park.”

  A wind that affects nothing else blows around him. His clothing streams away from his body. Sometimes it presses tight against him, revealing the outline of his skeleton. His hair remains motionless, concealing his face.

  I shout at Melon, “He’s not even listening to you!”

  She ignores me. “I’m your daughter! From America! I knew you’d understand me. You know what it’s like to be alone.”

  “I told my mother I’d talk to her landlord about the plumbing. She said I didn’t have anything else to do. She pestered me until I said yes. She called my cell phone while I was sitting in the park. ‘Why haven’t you done it yet? You can’t even talk to the landlord.’ She didn’t think I could do it. She thought I was a coward.”

  “Please! I don’t understand! Talk to me in English!”

  “I had an interview that day. Maybe I’d have gotten the job. Who knows? I went to the landlord. I told him to fix my mother’s plumbing. He said he’d get to it. I slammed him against the wall and told him, ‘Get to it now.’ He didn’t think I was a coward then.”

  “Your … your mother’s toilet …?”

  “He said he was going to call the police. I told him, ‘Go ahead.’ They could find me in the park. I left his house, but I didn’t go to the park. I bought a train ticket instead.”

  I grab urgently for Melon’s hand. “He’s stuck! Listen! It’s what they’re like. They’re fixed … fixed on loneliness, on kissing someone, on playing games …”

  “I was alone. They didn’t think I could do it.”

  Her father has reached the end of his story that is also the beginning. He’s repeating himself now, but Melon’s still listening to him, not me. Yurei stream around us, their hair growing longer and shorter as the torchlight flickers.

  I have to do something to get her attention.

  I fumble in my pocket. The mokume-gane wedding ring. Polished by my worrying fingers, it glistens. I hurl it toward the yurei.

  They descend, magpies after something shiny. Claws emerge from hair. Wordless, screaming voices rise.

  “You see?” I shout. “That’s all they are! Picking after scraps of lives they chose to leave behind!”

  One snatches the ring. It disappears under the veil of her hair. Others screech.

  Melon’s father drones. “They thought I was a coward. No one would hire me.”

  I rip open my pack and pull out the trash. Scissors, nail clippers, comb, compact.

  I throw them toward the trees. Where each item falls, flocks of yurei descend.

  “I spent all day in the park. I told my mother I’d talk to her landlord about the plumbing.”

  “It might make sense to kill yourself if you thought it would stop the pain. But look at them! It doesn’t stop! It just keeps going!”

  “She said I didn’t have anything else to do.”

  “There’s no family here! Look at them!”

  Two yurei attack each other in the air. Their claws rake toward each other’s throats.

  “They’ll tear each other apart for a shred of something living!”

  “She pestered me until I said yes. She called my cell phone while I was sitting in the park. ‘Why haven’t you done it yet?’ ”

  It’s not enough. Melon’s gaze is still on her father. Full of longing. Full of hope.

  I grab for a side pocket of her pack. She wrenches away, but I snatch the zipper. Open it, pull out what I saw her tuck there: the photo of her father’s corpse.

  I throw it at the ghost’s feet. At once, he falls silent. As he recognizes himself, he becomes an arrow of greed and obsession. He dives to retrieve it, Melon forgotten.

  “Do you see?” I ask. “Do you understand?”

  I see the moment when Melon’s gaze hardens. She turns away from her father. I grab her hand.

  Wordlessly, we run through firelit dark, terrain rough beneath our feet. We stumble over roots and rocks. Barely manage not to fall.

  The howling yurei horde pursues. I pull more trash from my pack. Strew it behind us. It slows them down, but they’re still too close.

  Melon shrugs off her pack. Abandons it.

  I follow her lead and throw the expensive stuff. The trainers from the hanged man. A fan of money.

  Our temporary lead widens. We glimpse sunlight through the trees. Burst into day so bright it makes us blink.

  The shadows speed behind us. We’ve nothing else to throw.

  From ahead, a drifting scent: mandarin oranges.

  There she is, floating above the fork of a tree, the twisted thing that tangled me in this. I want to snarl. I want to punish her. But she’s our only chance.

  “Please!” I shout. “We need to get out!”

  She doesn’t rotate toward my voice. Was already facing us. Was probably watching all along.

  She asks, “The usual price?”

  “Yes!”

  She floats toward us. Dread pricks the back of my neck.

  “Why are you helping now?” I ask.

  “Now there are two of you to pay.”

  In front of us: her hair extending toward our bodies. Behind us: the yurei horde blocking out the light. Her hair reaches us before the horde does. Wraps us in its cocoon.

  Tendrils tangle my eyelashes. Intrude into my ears, my nostrils. Horrible bug-shudder of dead-touch all over. Inescapable. We’re buried alive in her hair.

  Joy sparks her split ends like static electricity. Will she ever let us go?

  Eventually, the hair unwinds. I can move my fingers. My limbs. She unveils my sight last. The yurei horde is gone, passed while we were hidden.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  There’s acid in my tone. It’s hard to thank someone after they risk your life.

  Gratitude in my tone too. Hard not to be grateful after someone saves you.

  She floats a meter away from us. Her hair is back to its normal length, sweeping to her knees, no longer voluminous enough to engulf two people.

  “Consider your parents, your siblings, your children,” she says. “Tell the police about your troubles.”

  A lock of her hair separates from the rest. Points to a gap between trees.

  “End of a tape road there,” she says. “It’ll get you out.”

  She rotates to watch us leave.

  “I wonder wh
o she was,” Melon says. “Maybe she’s from old Japan. Like her kimono.”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Maybe she’s the first one who died in the forest.”

  “Maybe.”

  Melon and I sit in the parking lot. During the day, it’s filled with tourist buses. Now, no one else is here.

  We’ll go back to town soon. Now we need rest.

  “What am I going to do?” Melon asks plaintively.

  Hard to answer a question like that. So painfully honest.

  “You should call your grandparents.”

  “They don’t care.”

  “They might.”

  She shakes her head. Looks away.

  “Someone will care.”

  Her voice is quiet. “Yeah, right.”

  She inhales raggedly as if she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything either.

  Speaking feelings is hard for me, but I try. “You’ll be happy. Someday. Even for a few minutes. It’s more than the ghosts get.” Remembering what the yurei said in the forest, I add, “All roads lead to Aokigahara. You may as well walk slowly.”

  The words leave a too-sweet aftertaste. Sentimental. But they make Melon smile.

  Maybe a little sweetness will keep her from dying so young.

  Isn’t that why I’ve spent seven years in Aokigahara? Wishing to stop a girl from dying young?

  We sit quietly for a few more minutes before we walk to town. I sit by while she places an international collect call to her grandparents.

  Two AM.

  Wind whistles without blowing.

  My Sayomi.

  She coils hair around my wrists. Draws me closer.

  She’s different. Almost transparently pale. So cold that her embrace is like spring rain: sudden, drenching, cold.

  Hair strips my clothes. Winds between my thighs. A humid smell rises between us. Tears and desire mingle on our skins.

  She opens me. Begins her caress. Cold: both shocking and exquisite.

  We half-embrace, half-struggle on the floor of my single room. Same as we’ve been for seven years. Caught between yearning and anger.

  Does she blame me? For leaving? For failing to see what I should have seen?

  Do I blame her for drawing me back? For tangling me in death while I still lived?