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Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
—Vladimir Nabokov
I
I remember when I was a child, I met a teenager who came to mean a lot to me. I don’t really know what convinced him to suffer me. I remember the day he met my parents because of my ruse, and I remember what flashed across their faces: utter fear. Reflecting on it now, I was pretty stupid. There’s so much that could’ve gone wrong…a lot that has gone wrong over the years, but none of it was ever with him. It’s just a reminder of how innocent children are.
I remember him towering over me, the shadows of the trees and his soma dancing to envelope my small body, his blue hair shining like a saturated ocean against shards of emerald and zircon, bark and stripped arbors taking the role of calmes in stained glass.
It’s sad, really, that children must rely on each other. The only solace in our situation was our ages: I was only nine years old, and he was…did I ever ask for his age? I feel I’ve always asked people that, especially people I’ve met over the internet. I feel if I were to see his face from when I knew him, I’d realize how young he truly was, but teens look so mature and free when you’ve still got a randoseru on your back and the yellow hat messing up your hair. Anyway, he was a hero to me, lil ole me dealing with the divorce of my parents in a rainbow shirt and buns—I had the forehead of Yaito Ayakonoji, but my bangs have come to cover them up.
The island was so strange too. I sometimes reflect on it and realize I’d been born and partially raised on an artificial island. I might have originated there, but I had no care for its goings-on. All that concerned me was takoyaki and energy drinks. And the teenage boy, Minato.
I sit now in this train a decade later as a young woman at magical number nineteen. I work at a library, and it’s closed for a few days. It’s—
There was someone else too. Akinari was his name. Yes, I remember him…they were both deathly pale now that I think about it. Akinari wrote a book that’s been popular with the children since the early 2010s—I’ve never told anyone about him…
And the dog too.
All at the shrine, my haven in the rift.
Things got a bit hectic when I wrote my dad in 2010. From the scrawling penmanship, I thought he’d want to hit me. Or worse: Him.
Ring! Ring! Ring!
I hold up on her, put my phone on silent, and message her instead.
Mari, I’m still on the train. [Unamused Frisk sticker] :ME
MARI: oop sorry
MARI: u meet ur mystery man yet ?
I’ve told many of my friends about him, Mari no exception, especially when I had first moved in with mom. Some teachers questioned me on occasion whenever they overheard me rechronicling my tales. It was easy to explain at first, but every now and then one of ‘em called Mom. She’d explained him away as a babysitter, but she never brought up Minato-kun telling them off. That’s what she told me he did, anyway. I remember having to restrain my smile for that. “He said it was probably our fault…” Mom looked at me with a shadow of shame. I think I was thirteen when she told me that.
I don’t think he’d be on this train. :ME
I don’t even know if he’s here.
I’m pretty stupid even now. I’m here to visit my father, and yet I’m hoping to meet Him. He’d be maybe twenty-six years old. I can’t really picture someone that age with his hair color; I can’t picture him aging at all. Things are changing in that first department at least.
Mari sends me two photos. They’re of Soubi Agatsuma from Loveless and Satoko Tawada from My Boy.
MARI: wich kind is he gonna b
Mari has a pretty fucked up sense of humor in all honesty. She even gave me a warning for Loveless and still chose to send me this. I even told her about the letter incident.
MARI!!! HE’S NOT LIKE SOUBI :ME
You really shouldn’t joke about that stuff either.
MARI: [sans “GET DUNKED ON” sticker]
I don’t know how someone who likes Undertale could have this sense of humor. He was more like Tawada anyhow…except I hadn’t been able to stay in his orbit like Mashuu’s been able to do so far in the manga.
MARI: srsly tho, i hope u meet ur sleeping prince
Sleeping prince? :ME
“THE NEXT STOP IS IWATODAI.”
MARI: cmon, u stil hvnt seen utena????
I lock my phone and prepare for departure as the industrial zone and Moonlight Bridge come into view atop a sparkling ocean.
Maybe he was a prince.
I’m not really paying attention to his words. My dad’s…I can’t really explain it. I remember as a child he hit me once. Once, I tell myself. That’s what many do according to some books I’ve read. Even Mari has called me out on how I tend to downplay what’s happened to me over the years, and as partially telegraphed by her jabbing, even she’s suspicious of Minato. Sometimes my dad sounds convincing but hearing him and Mom argue as a kid was fucking awful. I’ve heard parents dragging their kids into their shit is itself a form of abuse, or at least childhood emotional neglect. At least, I tell myself.
He’s begun aging, but he got himself a much younger woman some years back. Frankly, I’m repulsed by him. There’s no clever metaphor to describe it. This country is beautiful, but it’s rather sad we must share it with people like him. He gets this beautiful look of the ocean near Iwatodai Station. At least my neighborhood looks nice, but I guess all of ‘em do.
Maybe that’s what Danny thought, except I can’t peer into people’s minds. The book is quite different from the movie so far. My dad isn’t Jack Torrance, but Mari’s told me that’s not necessary for me to dislike or even hate him. “Oh, fuck him, if I ever meet him, I’m whooping his ass!” That’s how she reacted when we met up in Sendai and I brought the matter up in one of my inevitable teenage depressive episodes.
As I look into his ever-weathered face, I think about what Mari said.
My sleeping prince.
I remember an odd dream I had as a kid. Mari remarked that Freud, Jung and Kunihiko Ikuhara would’ve “had field days constructing surrealist bullshit” from it. I dreamt I had been eaten up into a tower, a skyscraping series of twists of green and glass. I can’t quite remember it. I was only six, and memory is corrosive and unreliable, especially for things that never happened. The colors were strange, psychedelic, and I’d escaped into some corner. I’d seen some monsters, these masses of black goop resembling Gaster. I think I find the man who speaks in hands scarier. These other monsters emerged from them, some were similar goops while others were knights or lions. I remember screaming and crying my head off. But somehow, Minato came to the rescue. He wasn’t on a white horse, but he did carry a sword—no, Mari said a prince, not a knight.
A knightly prince at night.
He was with some other people, including a kid I saw at school here and there. I think there was a redhead, but I forget her name, I just remember she was stunning; I remember being a little jealous, or maybe I say that only now. And the dog was there too. I don’t know what he was doing. I think he was winged.
I remember Minato’s relieved expression. I still wonder about that. I’d mostly seen his permanent resting bitch face and the slight smile he gave on occasion—and the blush I induced on the last day we met. (“Okay, now he sounds like a Humbert Humbert type and I don’t like that, Mai-chan. He sounds cool in everything else you said but that’s fucking weird.” “Okay, maybe I just imagined that part then.”) And why was he relieved? Why was he in that tower?
I don’t remember the rest of the night very well. It was an exhaustion I’d never faced in my first nine years of life or in the ensuing decade. It was like darkness itself had imprisoned me. My body weighed like stone, and it was sore all over. Before I had this one, I’d occasionally have dreams where my eyelids got heavy and blinded me as such. It was like that. I remember dark skies and the gloomy tower like broken beer bottles, the glass shimmering under the moon. The moon was disconcertingly huge. I haven’t seen it that way ever since.
I’ve summoned his image intermittently over the years, my invocations slumping as I entered age thirteen. The worst thing I’ve familiarized myself with has been the fallibility of memory. I can’t do it as well anymore. He wore a black uniform, and the metal of his headphones would glitter when struck properly by the sun. There’s his face but I fear my memory has deteriorated too far for me to use that as a guidepost.
I came here to visit my father for Christmas Eve, and I’m already at the station in front of the strip wall which itself stands in front of my father’s apartment. The sun has lowered somewhat.
I look over the commercial edifices and capture in miniature the shrine we haunted. Its name escapes me like the letters I wrote—I burned them at fourteen from embarrassment.
The route came to me in bits and pieces in spite of altered landscapes and people. I’d list comparisons, but rot prevents me from doing so in a meaningful manner. I stand now at the bottom of the staircase, the beauty of the stone and masks stunning me with sordid nostalgia. I see the tori at the top. I remember how daunting and adventurous the climbing seemed to me as a child, the connection to nature filling my small chest and mind. Of course, I’m older now and recognize this isn’t virginal land we simply built around. Human hands might have had minimal manipulation for the trees surrounding me, but it was still grafted by our hand. That only makes it ever beautiful. I begin to climb them, my sneakers barely making a sound. I’m dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and jacket. Not exactly fitting for a Holy place, is it? I climb and climb, and I get flashes of the boy
(I’m older now than he was then)
listening to my problems. I remember when I first saw him here I hinted at what I craved. My diet is okay, but I’m surprised I didn’t get fat at a young age. Mom made sure of that never happening, even if it meant damaging my ego. But he never judged me. I compared all the boys I met to him, and few ever comforted me like him. I’ve held on dearly to the ones who have. I remember now I once had him take me to Wild Duck Burger (I restrain a giggle about its scandal three years ago). The salt on the fries felt different that day, and the soda tickled my mouth especially. I thought we were vagabonds, and I realize now how sad it must have been for him to comfort a child. I don’t really think I could do that well at my age. I can calm one at the library, yes, but a child bringing up divorce…it’s such a scary concept when you’re a cherub. I never realized its full gravity until I began The Shining with Mari. Despite experiencing it, I was too young to understand what a burden parents might put on their offspring during their proceedings. I now remember Akinari. He was grim, but beautiful, nonetheless. I think I had a crush on him too, partially because of his moribund appearance. They both scarcely smiled.
“I bet they wouldn’t care if I wasn’t here at all!” I exclaimed to the young man acting as caretaker. He’d simply responded “That isn’t true.” It was a cataclysmic ordeal to me.
I reach the tori, bow deeply, first step with the left foot, and the shrine unfurls to me as I climb the remaining steps, changed and unchanged. The sando leads to the haiden, the kagura-den stands to its left, and the massha to the right. Someone’s praying between the lion statues.
I purify myself at the chozuya and see the playground I dwelt in as a child. Minato would watch me go down the slide or climb the…I don’t know what you call it. A jungle gym? It reminds me of the tube animations that played on standby computers. Kids these days won’t recognize that, will they. The sun has turned more orange; it perfectly brushes and shades the Edenic trees.
This is underwhelming.
There’s no one else here save for me and the man at the box.
I pull out my phone and check the time. Five o’clock.
I might as well provide a donation and make a quick prayer. I walk over to where the man stands, his hair obscuring his face, deposit a five-hundred-yen coin, and go through the rituals as I once did as a child, the man warping peripherally.
I want to know more about Him.
I bow deeply again and begin my march out.
“Pardon me, have I met you before?”
I turn around and see the man…but that’s not quite the word. He’s young and does a bow. I do one in return.
I’m speechless. It’s the boy from my dream all grown up. (I say that like I’m thirty and not nineteen).
“I swear you look so familiar.” He scratches the back of his head and averts his eyes. “Err, sorry about that. My name’s Ken Amada.”
I smile. He was cute when I was a kid, and he’s clearly been raised well. He’s dressed simply in all black. Ebony dress pants and shirt, the buttons engraved with simplified rose patterns. He wears his brown hair loose, and it hasn’t change much apart from length. It now reaches his shoulders.
“I’m Maiko Oohashi. I think we attended Gekkoukan Elementary together, though I don’t think we ever spoke. I rarely wore my uniform if that helps you remember.”
“I think it does just a little bit.” He gives a small laugh. Then his face downcasts. “You went missing a long time ago, didn’t you?” He looks contemplative.
“Erm, yes, I think so. I can’t really remember how it happened.” I pause for a moment. “I remember the police station, and…and a man with blue hair took me there. Well, he wasn’t a man, he was a teenager.”
His eyes widen. “Do you remember what he looked like?”
I tilt my head in confusion. “Well, his hair was blue, so he stood out.” I don’t want to call Him pretty.
“Do you remember his name?”
“Minato. I never asked for his last name.”
His mouth shifts. I think he knows it did.
We begin walking down the stone stairs together. We bow deeply at the tori and continue our scale return.
“Did you know him, Mr. Amada?”
“Yes, and…” His brow gently furrows.
My heart jumps.
“Mr. Amada, how well do you remember him?”
He looks at me, his mouth slightly open. He should close it, a fly might swoop in. Or a woman.
I stop. “Mr. Amada, how did you know I went missing?”
He stops a few steps ahead, and I see him stifle a squirm.
“I constantly watched the news as a kid is all. I was born here, after all, only makes sense I was glued to the news.
“Ms. Oohashi—” he turns “—I have a favor to ask of you.”
“And what could that be?”
“I need you to tell me everything you knew about Minato Arisato.
II
The young man has led me to Minatodai Dormitory, where apparently Makoto dwelled in when I knew him. I told him everything I knew about him, which didn’t amount to much. I didn’t even know what kind of music he liked despite him always jamming out. Then again, I know how awkward it is to talk with a child.
Ken seemed worried at first, but he knew him when he was a child as well. The sun set on our walk here and the moon now hangs full at the tip of the building. The lights blaze but I don’t see any shadows dancing.
“It’s kind of strange looking back. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he’d be a pedophile.”
“That’s what my dad thought at the time. I don’t blame him.”
Ken opens the doors, and the lounge floods in. There’s…the woman. The woman from my dreams reading a book. She’s older now, but she’s even more beautiful than before.
“Ken, where have you…” She looks up at us and smiles gently, her wavy crimson hair bobbing, giving us a slight glimpse of the obscured eye.
“I do have to remember you’re twenty-one now.” She adjusts her short peacoat and places the book on the table.
The boy flushes. “M-Mom, that’s not what this is.”
She looks a bit young to be his mom, but maybe she just has an excellent skincare routine. Araki’s starting to push it after all, and he doesn’t look a day over 40. She’s a milf either way. She laughs, it makes my heart flutter.
“She knew Minato.”
Her eyes narrow and she stands up, showing us she isn’t as tall as one might presume. The boy is taller than both of us. I should’ve expected that.
She crosses her arms and, with her thumb resting on one side, she taps with her index finger the other side of her chin in contemplation.
“Come with us young lady, we have something to show you.”
She walks over to the reception desk and leads us behind it. There’s a book here, but it seems to only have collected dust over years of neglect. There’s a door as well, one I hadn’t noticed despite the desks and computers near it; somehow, despite the lights, this corner of the lounge is shrouded in darkness.
From her pocket she pulls out a key and unlocks the door.
It’s a small room with three wireframe shelves riding the walls. Opposite to us is a framed photo of Minato, and underneath held up by stands or frames or glass boxes are various items: letters, a tag, a car key, a strap, a manga, a lighter, and so on, and they all have names on them. Except for one.
My bead ring at the center without a label.
“Wh-What’s going on here?” I turn to the woman, his mom.
She nods to Ken.
“Minato…Minato died ten years ago.”
Ten years ago?
“He’s…dead?”
I step into the closet(?) and examine the other items. The names swim and I recognize only Tanaka, and—
A worn notebook has the name Akinari Kamiki.
“He knew many people, and we were no exception.” The woman stands next to me and gestures to the motorcycle key in glass. “He received a memento from nearly everyone he met; after he died we—”
“HOW DID HE DIE!?”
“In his sleep,” says the boy. “We didn’t really know how to react either.” He hangs his head. “I’ve somehow managed to outlive him…”
The woman, Mitsuru Kirijo judging by the label on the motorcycle keys, holds onto her arm. “The doctors found no sign of anything wrong. He was with one of our friends on the rooftop when he perished.”
“When we went into his room, we found all of these, and after our grieving we decided to find everyone he knew.”
“That’s…kind of creepy.”
The boy smiles to my astonishment. “It took about a month, but we had all of them sign these tags. This is to remember him.” He walks over to us and motions to a silver key. “The only name that’s been missing is yours. He was wearing it when we found him.”
The world blurs, and my breathing staggers.
“Why?”
They both look down as my throat tightens.
“I…I’ve held onto him for so long. I-I..I…”
They both hold me, and I cry even more.