A Small Charred Face Read online

  I hurriedly crawled out and carefully closed the lid so they wouldn’t find out what I’d been up to. I returned to where my papers lay spread out on the living room table.

  The summer-night breeze twisted itself around me once more, and my body temperature returned to normal. I solved the math problems. My fingers numb with cold gradually warmed up. The candles crackled.

  “Anyway, you can’t go out tonight. Hey! Are you listening, Kyo? Stray Bamboo are always prowling around on meeting night. Although, actually, this area at night is pretty much totally unsafe all the time. Hey! Mustah, tell him.”

  “Why should we both tell him the same thing? I’d just look like an idiot for saying it second. No thanks.”

  “Because he listens to you. Kyo likes you better, Mustah. I mean, he’s always going on with that ‘My Bamboo, my Bamboo’ business. I’m sure he loves you more than anything else in this world.”

  Mustah felt silent, embarrassed, and scratched his head. “Stay,” he growled. “In the house!”

  “…Whatever!”

  “Hey, Yoji. The kid’s not listening to me, like, at all, is he? He’s been pretty snarky with us lately, y’know.”

  “Probably just a rebellious phase? I’m pretty sure I heard humans get sick like that… Mustah, how was it for you?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  The two Bamboo griped and shouted as hands shot out to arrange the other’s hair and clothing, the nightly choreographed fight. This ritual of theirs, so quiet and functional when I first saw it, had grown quite animated, a heated exchange of opinions on child-rearing.

  I suppressed a laugh and slowly brought my eyes back to the world history reference book opened up on the table. It was actually more along the lines of what they studied in high school. Mr. Yu had lent it to me. Maybe he had even gone to the trouble of buying it with his own money. But he’d skittered away like he always did when I went to thank him. He’d also asked me if I was interested in applying for scholarships and going on to high school. But I’d told him I would ask my guardian, and that had been the end of it.

  My appearance had changed a lot already. I never cut my hair, so it had grown all the way to my waist. Maybe through some gene I had inherited from Mama, it was a brownish black with ends that twisted like I’d gotten a perm.

  Yoji apparently took comfort in the idea that no one would discover I was a boy if my hair was this long; he said it was okay for me not to wear a skirt. So when my T-shirt or sweater had a girlish design, I got to wear jeans on my bottom half.

  With each passing day, Yoji turned into more of a worrywart, while Mustah spoiled me in equal measure. The three of us found our balance like this.

  “Where’s the meeting?”

  “Can’t tell humans.”

  “Tch! So I don’t get to be part of the group…”

  “Ha ha ha!”

  I was being serious, half-disappointed, but Mustah laughed like it was the funniest thing I’d ever said. Yoji also suppressed a laugh, like he was faced with a pouting child.

  “What? What’s with you two?”

  “Telling anyone other than a Bamboo the time or place of the meeting is against the rules. Our laws are fairly strict.”

  “Will you end up buried in a hole?”

  “No, they wouldn’t go that far, but still.” Yoji shrugged lightly. “They’d cut an arm off.”

  “…Would it grow back?”

  “It would not.”

  I shuddered and decided I was definitely giving up on asking about the meeting place. I imagined an arm from Mustah and one from Yoji dropping to the floor with a pair of thuds. The scent of bamboo would puff up, but because they weren’t built like humans, the fallen arms would instantly dry up and turn to dust, to be carried away on the wind. A chill ran up my spine, and I shook my head.

  “Oh,” I said. “But what’s a stray Bamboo?”

  “Some of ’em don’t take the meetings seriously! Mostly the ones who live on their own, y’know? I think it’s not like they’re extremists, all antigovernment or something, but more like they think the whole thing’s just a hassle. Anarchists, I guess? But there aren’t any other Bamboo in town on meeting nights, so there’s some guys who take advantage and do bad stuff to humans. Only sometimes, but still.”

  I looked up, pencil wedged beneath my nose. I figured Mustah was more of the hassle type, which made me wonder at how he seemed not to like the anarchist Bamboo.

  “Well, if a Bamboo starts going around killing humans, the government’ll find them and make sure to drive them out of town. And the people who go after them are professionals. A murderer’s got no chance of avoiding exile. Eventually, that Bamboo’ll get sixty years in a barrel in the ground.”

  “That doesn’t bring the dead person back, though.” Mustah’s voice was dark. And then he looked back at me. “That’s why, Kyo, babe. You seriously cannot go out on the night of the full moon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, you hear me? Ever since you started going out wandering around at night, we’ve been worried, y’know!”

  “I told you, I’m just meeting friends. Everyone has to work, so we basically can’t hang out until evening, okay?”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Package handling down at the port, a little laundry, some prostitution.”

  They both looked back at me at the same time, mouths open, ready to speak. Then they looked at each other and clamped them shut again. And then they floated up from the floor and flew out with a whoosh.

  For some reason, on meeting nights, Yoji would always have a big red hat on him. Mustah had nothing.

  Once they were out on the deck, they locked the door from outside, looking stern. I hurriedly stood up and protested—“C’mon! Again?!”—my long hair swinging from side to side. Yoji feigned ignorance and flew up into the sky. Mustah looked at me, clapped his palms together, pressed the back of his hand to his cheek, telling me to be good and go to bed.

  I started to sulk. Tch! How long were they going to treat me like a child?

  Spinning as he headed upward with his shaky, dangerous style of flying, Mustah’s figure vanished in the blink of an eye.

  I guess the Bamboo hadn’t noticed yet that there was an exit hidden behind all the stuff piled up in the kitchen. I took down one box after another and opened the small kitchen door.

  The autumn sky was dull, the color of muddy water. The moon was hazy too.

  I threw my arms up and stretched for all I was worth. The overprotective grass monsters had finally left me alone! I kicked at the ground with my sneakers, then ran along the deserted, unpaved road hugging the coast. Ruts from wheels were dug out of the pebble-strewn surface. The night of the Bamboo meeting meant the night of a wonderful full moon, and because I was really a boy, of course, I raced through the night, practically exploding with energy.

  “Yer late, Nako!”

  “Yeah, my brother wouldn’t shut up, you know?”

  “Well, yeah, he’s prob’ly worried about his adorable baby sister going out at night.”

  I looked down at my own body. “That’s not it.”

  “Huh? What?”

  “Nah, it’s nothing.”

  Niita’s room. In a run-down place in the center of town where shacks were clustered together.

  Niita had basically stopped coming to school. Over half of the people in my class had vanished from the classroom. In the small room, with four three-tiered beds against the walls, those former classmates gathered like ghosts.

  I sat down on a bottom bunk and pulled a reference book from my black leather bag. “Let’s do world history.”

  “I’m with Nako. I mean, we need math the most, but it’s also super boring, y’know? Once a month’s enough of that.”

  “We’ll get right to it,” I said. “This is a world map.
Japan is this long, thin island.”

  “Whoa! It’s tiny!”

  “This is China.”

  “It’s huge! So big!”

  “My parents are from Argentina.”

  “Um, this is their homeland then.”

  “Really? Isn’t that too far away?”

  We met like this sometimes after night fell so I could teach them what I’d learned in school. I picked things people needed to actually live in the world and offered up awkward lectures. Like math and accounting and English and geography.

  Mustah and Yoji didn’t know about these nighttime lessons, but Mr. Yu had probably figured it out. He’d sometimes ask me how everyone was. Each time, I’d answer briefly, Good.

  Everyone pushed and shoved and jostled to peer at the world map. The balance of power and the state of trade between countries. Religious beliefs and ethnic issues. As I related various facts and concepts, Niita and the others would say that, now that I mentioned it, a customer from this ethnic group had been like this, or that such-and-such kind of cargo had come to the port recently.

  “You know that janitor guy?” Niita said, suddenly. It was right around the time the conversation was petering out and we were opening the candy drops someone had brought.

  I remembered him yanking on Niita’s arm, naked from the waist down, and I frowned as I nodded.

  “Turns out he’s actually the same age as Mr. Yu.” Niita was casual.

  “Noooo way. He’s so old, though.”

  “It’s true, though! I guess they were kids together in school. And on top of that, the old man was actually smarter or something.”

  It felt like the air had suddenly got thinner. I wondered what it was.

  “But he couldn’t go to high school or anything, so he started working, y’know? And then he didn’t have any money, and he was stuck here. And in this place, even if you don’t start out garbage, you turn into garbage. So basically, he ended up like that. I guess he asked Mr. Yu for that job as the janitor.”

  “Is that what happened.” There was a hard edge to my voice.

  Niita slowly lifted his face. He looked right into my eyes, something he didn’t usually do. “Nako, don’t you end up like that.”

  “Come on! What’s that, out of the blue! There’s no way I would. A total pervert like that. Quit it!” I leaned forward resolutely.

  The other guys were also surprised, wondering what this was about, and they looked at Niita. His face was incredibly serious.

  “I’ll always be on your side. Okay? You just keep being our Miss Nako, our teacher. I like you and all, but I never feel like I like you like you, you know? But anyway, you’re a good kid, like you were brought up right. And, like, you make my head spin. So it’s like, you know.”

  “I know what? You’re creeping me out, Niita.”

  “If you grow up and turn into garbage, then there’ll be nothing for me to believe in in this town.”

  Niita walked me to the meandering road that ran along the coast. I badly missed the time when he had sat beside me in the slanting prefab school that was a school in name only. It’d only been a couple of years since then, but all kinds of things had changed.

  Niita waved his hand vigorously and then went back the way we had come. Alone, I started running toward the house, the moon full in the sky. The autumn wind was already cool. I shivered. All I could hear was the sound of my own feet. Orange sneakers. I was getting pretty tired. Somewhere, a cat meowed. Gradually, I slowed down to a walk.

  And then, suddenly, I heard a sound from somewhere—ominous, like something slicing through the air. I gasped and turned around.

  I don’t know if it came from behind or hurled itself from the side. A shadow much larger than I was hung over me, and before I knew it, I was on the ground. My first thought was that it was a stray Bamboo. I was wrong.

  My shirt was immediately ripped open. My jeans were yanked down. My sneakers sailed through the air a surprisingly long distance. Ah! He thinks I’m a girl.

  I came back to myself and tried to scream. Instantly, a thick mitt of a hand clamped down over my mouth. I can’t breathe! My eyeballs were on the verge of popping out of my skull. I spasmed violently. I reached out and grabbed my attacker’s wrist. But he didn’t even flinch.

  The hazy moon swelled up. The night grew eerily deeper. My consciousness started to fade. All the strength drained from my limbs. I was basically naked by this point. But the man couldn’t get my jeans to come off and was visibly annoyed. He pulled out a knife and cut into the fabric. The blade hit my thigh and dug into my skin. He pulled it back and brandished it, nicking my chest. The scent of blood spread out around us.

  I didn’t have enough air. A weird noise came from my throat. Maybe I was going to die. This suddenly. Even though I had just been laughing and having fun with my friends.

  Then I saw a black shadow closing in on me, obstructing the large moon. Eyes I had started to close opened wide in surprise. Relieved tears welled up in the corners. The face of a young man with dark skin filled my blurry field of view.

  Mustah!

  I had a dream like this once.

  In the next instant, the man hanging over me flew off to one side. Lightly, like a scrap of fabric. I tried to say something, but my throat could only produce a weak croak.

  The knife the man still clutched grazed Mustah’s cheek, making the faintest of sounds. Shf! A straight line appeared on Mustah’s cheek, and the green smell of grass unfurled around us. Liquid—I couldn’t tell if it was red or green or clear—fell from the wound and landed with a splat on my chest, atop my own wound, making my chest throb painfully for some reason.

  The wound on Mustah’s cheek closed like magic. His beautiful skin was unblemished again. It was like watching a video in rewind.

  I heard Yoji’s sharp cry. In the blink of an eye, he was standing beside me. He was pointing at me and shouting shrilly—so very different from the usual gentle, calm Yoji.

  Hazily, I looked down to see what he was pointing at. The nick on my chest from the knife, red blood oozing from it. And the liquid from Mustah’s cheek slowly melting into it, illuminated by the light of the moon. Gently.

  “Yoji! Yoji! Yoji!”

  “Shout all you want—it’s not going to change anything. Mustah, bring Kyo over here. Hurry.”

  “Ah…ah…unh.” I had my hands full with breathing, now that I was finally able to again. I eagerly gulped down fresh air, my throat wheezing.

  Mustah timidly stepped forward and easily picked me up. Me, half-naked and covered in blood. In too much of a panic, he flew up high in the night sky, spinning around in place and descending abruptly to bring me over to the deserted lot to one side. Finally, he lowered me to the ground.

  Yoji peered into my eyes. “How do you feel right now?”

  “Um. I’m getting cold. And I feel kinda weird, I guess.”

  Next to me, Mustah groaned. But what exactly was all this? I mean, the hoodlum was gone now, and neither of the cuts he’d given me qualified as lethal.

  Yoji bared his teeth. His appearance suddenly changed completely. This was the face of a ferocious, supernatural monster that walked the night. He put his lips to my bared chest. I twitched and reflexively pulled back as Yoji licked at the cut. Mustah was silent, still panicked. Yoji sucked up the blood oozing from my wound.

  “Unh!”

  “Just hang on, Kyo. Okay?” Mustah said, sounding like he was about to burst into tears. He kneaded his hands together restlessly, his face crumpled up.

  Yoji lifted his head and spat out blood. And then he brought his lips back down. Suck it up, spit it out. And again and again.

  I began to fade from consciousness.

  “Kyo, you okay?” Mustah hung his head. “Sorry, okay? Sorry.”

  “What? Is…”

  “And Yoji, you too! I
’m sorry!”

  “You don’t need to apologize, Mustah. It’s finished now.” Yoji lifted his head again. His lips were dyed red with my blood. This, along with his pale skin, made him look he had been made up for his own funeral.

  “Yoji, that’s some nice work there. If it was me, I’d just keep drinking. And then I’d actually kill Kyo…”

  “We’ve just had different experience as Bamboo, that’s all,” Yoji said, lightly, his face still covered in blood. “You only know seventeen or so years of Bamboo life, right? But I witnessed the war and the revolution. I’ve seen a lot of history. And I was Bamboo the whole time.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. For the first time in a long time, I remembered the tearstained book of Chinese poetry. Idly, I wondered if Yoji was one of the Bamboo who had come flowing down an eternal river from a distant foreign land.

  The moon suddenly became very blurry. And then I passed out.

  The next thing I knew, I was back at the house.

  Mustah had probably flown home with me in his arms again. Like the first time he’d brought me to this house. What was different this time, though, was that now his face was drained of all color, and he was silently clutching my hand. He wasn’t threatening me either; no Quit fooling around, you brat, I’ll eat you up like jam or anything.

  As for Yoji, he went out and came back again carrying a pile of straw rope for some reason. His face was tenser than I’d ever seen it. He wound the rope around me and tied me to a pillar.

  “Poor thing. Our little Kyo…”

  “It’d be a real problem if something happened during the day. We wouldn’t be able to protect him.”

  “Yeah. But—aah, I really am so sorry, Kyo!”

  Sorry, he says. If something happened, he says. What?

  The two grass monsters sat still by my side, both silent, until moments before dawn. Only the flames of the candles moved. And then they headed to the small room, looking back regretfully, and climbed into the chest. The lid slowly closed, and I was alone in the living room.

  The morning sun began to shine on the other side of the glass doors. The sea also shone whitely, announcing the start of a new day.