A Small Charred Face Read online

  Dawn was imminent. The morning was approaching across the surface of the ocean.

  I could see that the faces of the two Bamboo were both paler than they had been at the start of the night. Maybe because morning was near. In one hand, Yoji held a liter-sized pack of blood. I assumed they had bought it at the hospital where they worked.

  “Little Kyo, it seems you are a wanted man.” For all his hurried flying, Yoji sounded cool and relaxed. I stared at him blankly.

  “That boss guy you were talking about.” Mustah walked, rather than flew, in. “Heard he’s got a bunch of feelers out for a little boy they accidentally let get away in the town up there. I seriously doubt they’d come all the way down here, though. And the people who live here have basically nothing to do with them. But Yoji’s all worried and kicking up a fuss, all ‘Oh, the danger!’ ”

  “Mustah, it’s just like you said. We should make him wear a disguise. Even after he grows up too. Definitely.”

  After I grow up?

  Mustah nodded. “Take a look, Kyo!” And he pointed at something.

  The change of clothes that had been left on the table. The silk blouse and the long black skirt. The girl’s school uniform?

  I got up in a panic. “I won’t. No way.”

  “Look, you. They’ve got their eyes peeled for a boy, right? So if you be a girl and stay here for a while, like, once you grow up, maybe…” Mustah cut himself off and met Yoji’s eyes. They nodded at each other.

  What was it?

  I was upset, but the two grown-ups talked me down, and eventually I resigned myself to putting the uniform on. Yoji stared hard at me when I was naked, very interested somehow. “Quit it,” I said, turning my back to him.

  The blouse with the square necktie. The white sweater. The black skirt with the pleats. I stared fearfully at my reflection in the glass. I was still holding myself like a boy, so the effect was weird.

  Yoji and Mustah both let out a sigh, like they could finally relax. They flopped down on the sofa on either side of me at the same time.

  The only thing reflected in the glass was the new me; the two men seated behind me to my right and my left were nowhere to be found.

  Mustah slapped my butt hard. “I don’t know if you really look like a girl, though. But people here have too much on their own plates to go around looking at a kid in a skirt and spending brain power wondering if she isn’t really a boy. Right, Yoji?”

  Yoji was silent, looking at me with concern. And then said, “Yes.”

  Mustah let out another relieved sigh. The scent of bamboo wafted up to my nostrils.

  They stood up and started to undress. This part, they each did themselves. Mustah let his clothes fall where he stood, and Yoji picked them up and folded them.

  I got sleepy again and rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.

  Weak light came in through the glass, as if to announce that morning would soon arrive. So did that mean that human time was finally starting? The gentle grass monsters slipped sluggishly into the small, cold room at the back. They opened the lid of the chest, and a chill instantly filled the air. The lid slowly closed, and all sense of their presence disappeared.

  I went to sleep again on the sofa. Wearing the girl clothes.

  That night, I had a dream. In it, I was still in the town above. I was desperately fleeing along a dark road at night. The men were chasing me. I ducked into an alley to catch my breath. When I looked back, the men weren’t running along the road, but flying through the air, ready to dance down at any moment and snap my windpipe. Ah! Bamboo are after me! I started to scream.

  Then another Bamboo flew in from somewhere… Mustah, maybe?

  It was Mustah!

  He flicked a hand out, wrapped his arm around my waist, and then immediately flew up high into the night sky. His flight was a little erratic, but he skillfully lost my pursuers, and we kept flying, drifting through the starry sky.

  Thank goodness. You saved me…

  Grinning, I started to say something in his ear. But even though it was a dream, my eyelids suddenly grew incredibly heavy. I started to drift off. Secure, I fell into a deep sleep in that beautiful starry night. The wind on my skin felt good too, and even as I slept, an unconscious smile crept across my face.

  School

  Wake up in the morning. The antique alarm clock Yoji bought me rings at seven sharp. Wash my face, tie my hair—now down to my shoulders—back into pigtails. Get dressed.

  Breakfast is always on the table. Onigiri rice balls, bread in packages. Sometimes several cans of fish are piled up there for some reason.

  Yoji comes flying home at dawn with a pack of blood in one hand and food for me in the other. He leaves the food on the table with a note, but from time to time, Mustah plays games with me and hides the stuff inside a cupboard or something. One time, when I can’t find it and have to leave with an empty stomach, Yoji gets mad at him, and Mustah is sad.

  Black leather bag I carry on my back. Inside, a bundle of papers copied from the textbook and my notebooks. Run out of the house.

  The Bamboo are asleep. Actually, you could even say dead maybe. They won’t come back to life until nightfall, those mysterious grass monsters from the other side of the ocean.

  “Morning, Nako!”

  In a corner of the prefab school lot, the morning was dazzling with the light bouncing back off the ocean. Beads of sweat dripped down my face.

  The lower town no longer had a respectable school. There was just a small cram-school-type place, like the temple elementary schools they used to have way back when. Prefab buildings on the verge of crumbling dotted the empty factory lot, one unit for each grade. And a teacher in each one too. I went to this school dressed as a girl, under the name of my dead sister. A disguise so the men from above wouldn’t find me.

  I was an excellent student. Because the only thing I could do to stay alive right then was study. If I was going to stay in this town forever, I would need something. Maybe I could be a teacher. Being an assistant nurse like Mustah and Yoji wouldn’t be too bad, either, but I’d probably be stuck in a hand-to-mouth life with a job like that.

  …If I was going to live. And so I worked.

  The boy who called out to me had become a friend. He had dark skin and long eyelashes. He was super skinny but always full of energy. He wasn’t good at school, so I’d help him sometimes. I was easy to talk to for a girl. He often said to me, “Nako, you just really get stuff.” Of course. I was really a boy, after all.

  “Niita! Morning!”

  “Lemme see your homework.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  We went into the classroom, pushing and shoving and joking around. Desks and chairs of disparate design, size, and color had been forced into rows. They were things that had been picked up here and there. Like the children of this town with their various eye colors and skin tones.

  My seat was a low Japanese-style desk of a design very much like the one I had dived under that night. I’d shuddered at the thought that it might actually be the very desk, but I’d soon gotten used to it.

  The past was passing. So the terror would disappear at some point too. Right now, I was just sweet little Nako. The teacher apparently thought Yoji was my older brother. That was fine.

  Niita took out a pencil and began enthusiastically copying from my notebook. The teacher came in suddenly through the window. This was faster than going around to the actual door, so it wasn’t like he was fooling around or anything. Mr. Yu was a surprisingly large man. He was nice and a little weird, with a strange expression like he was always suppressing a laugh. He caught Niita cheating now and said, “Hey now!” but he wasn’t threatening at all.

  “Now, let’s begin. We’ll start with Language Arts.”

  I spread out my copy of the textbook, sat up straight, and stared at the whiteboard.


  Once evening fell, school was over. A third of the children stayed until the last class. The others disappeared one after another to help with their parents’ work or head to their own part-time jobs. So the key lessons were held in the morning. The afternoon was music or art or gym.

  Once the students were gone, the janitor would start his rounds. A large man of unknown age with gray skin. In the beginning, I suspected he might have been Bamboo. He didn’t work until after sunset, and his gait was exceedingly stiff, like one of the walking dead. But one day, I saw him open his big mouth and scarf down instant yakisoba noodles, and I realized with disappointment that he wasn’t.

  “Quit it!”

  I heard Niita shout from the shadow of the prefab classroom. Calling “Niitaaaa,” I stretched my neck out and peered in to see the janitor holding Niita’s wrist tightly. And pulling down his own pants with his free hand. He looked idiotic, his lower half alone bared to the world. Still half bent over, he glared when he saw me. Maybe this made him loosen his grip on my friend’s wrist; Niita twisted and pulled himself free and then ran away as fast as he could. He grabbed my hand, and we fled the scene.

  The evening light painted the town red. And with the setting of the sun, it was a lot colder out. Off in the distance, a crow cawed.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “A regular grown-up,” came the cold response.

  I was dumbfounded. “What? Regular?”

  “Yeah. But! As if I’d let him do anything for free!” Niita was seriously angry. “I have a price. Mama makes sure to set one. Changing it in line with what the market will bear. He’s a thief. Well, I’m not gonna be stolen!”

  As I ran along with him, I learned one more thing about this town. That I had to get out. That I had to fight if I was going to live. Even still…

  Niita’s face in profile as he ran alongside me was dark and tense, like those of the organization men I had seen from beneath the desk that night in the mansion. Impassive like a rusted grown-up.

  The evening sun sank above us. It was so heavy I closed my eyes.

  “Kyo! Hon! Over here!”

  I headed down along the beach, all signs of people and houses gradually disappearing, before I finally arrived at the house.

  The instant I stepped onto the worn wooden deck, Mustah called out to me from inside. The smile on his face was almost dazzling. His laughter made his thick hair move like a separate living creature on his head. Jumping up and down, he invited me over with a hand.

  Yoji emerged from inside the small room and looked at me, also grinning.

  Like a dog called by its master, I raced across the deck and flew into the room. My pigtails swung around and hit my shoulders. “What?”

  “Wow! Your hair’s getting so long,” Mustah said, looking delighted.

  Well, that was true, but what did it matter exactly? I cocked my head to one side, and a large hand reached out to stroke my head roughly. My head bent even farther to one side, threatening to snap off. Seeing my troubled look, Yoji burst out laughing. His snickering voice sounded warm and cozy.

  “It’s not just your hair, either. Right, Yoji?”

  “Right!”

  “You’re taller too, Kyo.”

  “Am I? I can’t tell.” As I spoke, they pushed me over to a pillar in the living room.

  “Stand up taller! C’mon, give it some oomph!” they urged, excitedly. Mustah gouged out a mark with a utility knife right above my head on the pillar.

  The three of us pressed our foreheads together and stared at it intently. Silence.

  Yoji made a sound in his throat like a contented cat. Mustah laughed boisterously and praised me for some reason. “You did it,” “Nice work,” that kind of stuff.

  “You’re being weird,” I said, and finally burst out laughing too.

  The mark was six or seven centimeters higher than the one from when I first came to this house by the sea. I was steadily getting taller. Now that I thought about it, the black skirt had been fairly long, but it was actually getting pretty short. We had replaced the blouse twice already too.

  Yoji grabbed my hand. Mustah continued to pat my head roughly. They chattered excitedly above me.

  “His hair’s longer.”

  “Yeah. And he just keeps growing.”

  “He’s all tanned—he looks so healthy now.”

  “And he’s getting cheekier and cheekier!”

  “He’s changing every day, isn’t he? People grow up.”

  “It’s ’cause he’s alive. Not like us. This kid’s alive!”

  “Fire. This is fire!”

  “Fire!”

  …Fire?

  The flames of countless candles burned in the candlesticks set out around the room. Blowing in from outside, the wind made them all flicker uneasily. The night had only just started, so the candles were still long. But as time passed, they would get shorter, bit by bit. And then, around the time that the night was ending, they would quiver abruptly and go out. The same thing happened every night. Maybe the Bamboo thought that this was what being alive was.

  Showered in praise, I felt a little giddy. Their jobs didn’t pay a lot, and the blood packs they needed were expensive, so Mustah and Yoji didn’t have many luxuries in their lives. They lived modestly. Still, as much as they could, they worried about me and kept me safe. I knew kids living with their human parents who didn’t get the chance to study for their future, since their hands were full with the job of turning physical labor or humiliation into money every day. Like my friend Niita.

  I was a blessed child. My close brush with death was only a bad dream, but my saviors were real. Was their fierce joy born from the fact that I was alive?

  But from my perspective, Yoji—moved to tears by books of poetry—and Mustah—laughing loudly with his camera at the ready, constantly fooling around, hugging me with every muscle in his body—were alive just like me. Even if their hair and nails didn’t grow a single millimeter, even if they never got older, they were alive. Which meant…?

  Did I think that it meant their hearts pumped? Did I feel like Mustah and Yoji were changing? Flames themselves, growing warmer, flaring out, and then sputtering and dying. I wondered.

  At any rate, we unfortunately didn’t get to spend a long time talking intimately like this, human me and the Bamboo Mustah and Yoji. That night, again, it was getting to be time for them to head off to work. They fussed unconsciously with each other’s hair, pulled up their collars, and inspected appearances before nodding impassively at each other. The whole time, it was like a ritual. I somehow started to feel like it was too bad that I would never take part in this camaraderie.

  Abruptly, I found the whole thing weird. One night, I asked Mustah, “Hey, do Bamboo all live in groups of two or three? And if they do, do they all groom one another like that? Forever?”

  “Nah, a lot of Bamboo live alone.” Mustah shrugged. Lightly, as if to say that was a tragedy that would absolutely never happen to him. “You can tell pretty quick which ones are on their own, y’know.”

  “How?”

  “ ’Cause they’re filthy!”

  Hearing this, Yoji frowned slightly.

  “Like, their hair’s all over the place! And they’re not so much wearing their clothes as the clothes are just hanging off their bodies. They stand out at the meetings. Like Yoji here—I mean, he was like that when we first met, y’know.”

  “What?” I replied, surprised. “No way!”

  Combed black hair, neatly pressed shirt. That this boy who was neat nearly to the point of neurosis would have ever been dirty…

  “So what about you, Mustah?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “…I was always like this.” Then he got tight-lipped, and I couldn’t get him to tell me anything else.

  There was no sense
of intimacy or love in the hands that reached out to make the other presentable again tonight. In fact, it looked like a silent boxing match. I was sitting on the floor, looking up at them performing this dance, like I did every evening without ever getting bored of it.

  Mustah gasped and reached a hand out toward me. Jokingly, he tugged on the collar of my blouse too. I was secretly delighted, but at the same time, it made my heart hurt for some reason. Like I alone was different.

  Right, my Bamboo?

  That night.

  After they left for the night shift, I sat on the floor by myself and spread out my copied textbook pages. I had read all of them so many times that I had almost memorized them.

  I was resisting. With help from the mysterious Bamboo. Facing forward, walking straight ahead. But sometimes, those wide-open eyes would swoop down at me. When I let my guard down, the nightmare would descend from the town above. Like when I’d be running around with Niita and the others. And they’d be all, “No girl runs that fast,” “How come you can run like that, huh?” Comments like those practically made me jump out of my skin.

  I looked up from the textbook pages and stood up. Despite the fact that it was summer, a chill hung in the room, the candles flickering in all kinds of different candlesticks.

  As if called to it, I went into the small room. I pushed the lid of the large chest up and stealthily slipped inside. A white fog instantly coiled around me. Cold like the inside of a refrigerator. Seen from inside the chest, the dark ceiling was infinitely far off, and the real world seemed somewhere off in the distance. It was almost like I was dead. Or like I had become the roots of a plant, buried deep within the earth.

  I slowly closed my eyes. My lips twitched.

  Bamboo. The ones who walk the night. Grass monsters from the depths of China.

  I opened my eyes with a gasp. I was shivering inside the chest. Perhaps because of the cold.