The Spirits of Language

- Kotodama no Monogatari -

Aphorism

Chapter Three: The Gateway to Imagination

Takamura and Makoto had time to bond in the next few days, mostly because Honda preferred a group of girls she had met and Morioka was isolated with her class, for reasons unknown. Kawasaki, for good or for bad, had decided to spend quality time with his roommate. Makoto would randomly see him in the hallway chatting with a stranger or dragging a smaller, quiet looking boy with a disheveled appearance around. Although he didn't understand it, Kawasaki had somehow failed to introduce any of his new acquaintances to his roommate.

Makoto had thought that the annoyingly jubilant boy would be overjoyed to initiate another group discussion, but he had actually seen very little of him in the past three days. It was a nice reprieve, he supposed, except for the fact that he was now stuck with Takamura and his neurotic behavior that was sure to give him a heart attack before the monsters even had a chance to get their jaws near him.

There were numerous instances just while they were in their dorm room, but the worst was probably Takamura's uncanny ability to become upset and anxious about every sound and every shadow twitching on the ground. He was quick to break into tears about how the monsters would emerge from the walls again, and had even deeper suspicions about the other students, the ones who wished to wager their lives for a job.

Makoto might have agreed, but that didn't mean he broke down every second of his life. He had learnt self-control long ago, after he had been punished one too many times and had been forced to clean the entire classroom for three weeks in a row. Complaining and becoming anxious over such matters wouldn't change a thing. It only ostracized a person more and more, until no one could trust you. He tried to calm Takamura down, tried to convince him that it was no use crying.

As he should have expected, it didn't work at all. His roommate just launched into a deeper depression, too afraid to commit suicide, but too cowardly to stop crying every time they heard any series of thumps at night. He still hadn't figured out where those came from, only that it didn't seem to harm him. That was enough for Makoto. He had other things to worry about.

"Gateway" was still the source of a majority of his problems. Takamura had not been of any help. It was difficult to gain his attention at night once the raucous noises started, and they had classes during the day. It took him an hour to figure out that Takamura's character was the one used in the word for school, "learning". And he had no idea how to imagine that, either, besides a school textbook that would be utterly useless during a fight.

That was how Makoto ended up dragging Takamura to a different part of the campus, one they hadn't been able to visit since the first day for any variety of reasons. The library was across the school, down various hallways that twisted and shone with bright florescent lighting. It was a simple walk across the field outside, so despite his roommate's misgivings concerning new territory, Makoto managed to get them both inside the double wooden doors without losing a limb.

"We should probably figure out how to use these things. If it's all they're going to give us to fight with, we should at least find out how to do that. Honda-san told me a lot of people were coming here to research it. It doesn't seem to matter what type of context your character is used in, only that it makes up other words," Makoto explained. None of the information was something he had known beforehand. He had been lucky to catch Honda during lunch yesterday and that they talked about it.

"How am I supposed to use knowledge, huh? I already know what words it's used in, and none of it helps!" Takamura argued. He was surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on perspective) good at slipping away and running off. For the moment, Makoto had a firm grip on his forearm, but he didn't doubt his roommate's ability to slink away if he let go.

"Well, you can either try and think of a way to use it, or return to our room alone. I don't think there's anyone around right now," Makoto said offhandedly. At this point he didn't feel guilty for scaring the boy, who was easily defeated by the comment and prospective of another Blight disturbing their day. It hadn't happened since the first one, but according to the other students it could appear on any pleasant day.

That was enough to convince Takamura that searching for dictionaries might be a good idea, even if the character used to write "school" really had no alternative meanings. Makoto didn't understand how he might visualize knowledge, since Morioka had explained the specifics of fighting with characters. His problem was that "gateway" seemed to have no offensive properties. Was he supposed to draw doors out of thin air?

If so, he would need to visualize a place for that door to lead to...it was a huge headache. Simply being able to create a shield out of thin air wasn't enough for him, although it sounded strange. There were certainly creatures that could shatter the barrier, as that bone white monster had been able to with a few head-on charges.

The library was empty, except for the occasional employee sorting out book catalogues. The students had obviously found more pressing matters to worry about than their studies. The high shelf where the index said the dictionaries were was a little sparse, but Makoto managed to salvage two decent volumes that weren't too out of date. People certainly weren't caught up on their studies of kanji, but it was a hard subject for fifteen year olds to even possess much knowledge about in the first place.

"What's it like where you live?" Takamura asked as he lazily flipped through the dictionary. It seemed to be one of his random moments of sanity that made Makoto raise an eyebrow at him.

"Tokyo is just like any city, I suppose. Nothing really weird happens," he shrugged, trailing a finger down the columns. He was probably an abnormally dull person, but he had never found his birthplace extravagant. "It's not like TV shows. We don't really hang out in places like Shinjuku often. Because we were only junior high school students at the time, my parents never allowed me to go there anyways, and we didn't live in the city itself. You can get bored anywhere in the world."

"Oh...were you always bored?"

"Not necessarily, but I guess you could say that," Makoto said. "Before this, I imagine most of us were just normal kids. When you ask me to think back on it, I can't really remember what it is I did."

"I guess it's the same for me…I only came here because I know I can't get into a university on a scholarship. And I've always been to scared to try sports, seeing that players get hurt so often. Even my younger sister's more outgoing than I am…" Takamura sighed and placed his head on the opened dictionary, blowing a puff of breath into the air. "It'd be nice to call them."

"We aren't allowed cellphones here, right? They don't even have computers," Makoto mused. He had thought it strange from the start, of course, another suspicious detail he had tried to get his parents to notice. It had been a blaring signal that the place could not be trusted. "I guess it'd be pretty bad if we started blabbering about how this place is a slaughterhouse."

Shortly after, some people from class one requested that the student body assemble in the cafeteria for a meeting. Makoto and Takamura attended only because they had begun to grow cross-eyed from perusing those dictionaries. Along the way they heard various complaints, murmuring that it was just a bunch of foolish students who thought they could try and break out of the place. They laughed it off and continued on.

The meeting, as it turned out, was not intended to raise a student rebellion, but to raise a festival from the ground up. It confused Makoto for a while as the representatives spoke while standing on the lunch tables. The primary schools, junior high schools, and high schools normally hosted festivals for the community to attend and enjoy in the fall. Naraka High School had no such tradition, now for obvious reasons.

They proposed an impromptu festival, just to raise the students' spirits, nothing elaborate. It probably wouldn't take anymore room than the size of the cafeteria. They decided to do it quickly, just in case the next Blight decided to occur, and each class that wished to participate would set up a stand. Although it went unmentioned, Honda informed him under her breath that two students had committed suicide, and another had attempted it. The girl was now detained in the infirmary until the nurse decided she wouldn't try to kill herself again.

He had forgotten about Kawasaki until the boy came running up to them, a wide grin on his face and a dark gleam in his eyes that Makoto was not quite comfortable with. The quiet boy he had been dragging along with him was nowhere to be found, but he offered no explanation and motioned to a group of their classmates from homeroom.

"Don't you like festivals? They have a lot over in Kyoto, don't they?" Kawasaki said excitedly. It was a surprise that he wasn't jumping around to expend the extra energy.

"Hey, didn't I tell you-"

"So I got these guys together and they said they'd help with the stand. Everyone's participated in your school festivals before, right?" He didn't need an answer; all schools throughout Japan had festivals once a year. "What do you guys want to do? It can't be anything big, since it's going to happen tomorrow or the day after, but I'm sure we can put something together. The nurse said she'd talk to the staff and help us get whatever we need from outside."

"You're thinking about a festival now?"

"We won't have enough people to hold one in fall," Kawasaki said flippantly. Makoto's eyes flickered over to the boy, but his composure hardly changed between the offhand comment and his next rant. He supposed it made sense now that he knew Kawasaki had a sibling who had attended, but it was still a little blunt. "So, what should we do? One stand's probably going to have the food, and the rest festival games. What did everyone like as a kid?"

Makoto shrugged. He had always been dragged along as a kid by his friends, and it was only exciting because of them. His junior high school's festivals had been normal ones, bustling and hard to navigate without losing a shoe.

"Hey, hey, what about the goldfish scooping game? Someone over there shouted it out," Kawasaki said, pointing beyond the crowd. Their classmates, whoever decided to participate, reached a quick consensus brought on by the lack of time in their decision-making. This was probably the quickest, most unplanned festival anyone had ever attended, but apparently some people were intent on making it fun.

The next day's festival wasn't colorful and crowded, the air filled with a medley of aromas from cooking food, as a normal festival might have been. They set up four white tents (as the fifth class had not attended the meeting) and dragged desks and chairs outside from their classrooms to use as tables. The first class had the least amount of supplies, much to their confusion, and everyone seemed extremely unorganized.

Makoto dodged random students as he waded through the crowd centered in the middle of a courtyard, a large plastic container he could barely see over balanced in his arms. Despite the impromptu nature of the event, and much to his confusion, everyone attending seemed to be smiling and laughing. They acted as if they were in a normal high school, as if they might not die tomorrow, as if the government had not branded them as unfortunate guinea pigs. He wished he could reach the brand on his neck. Thinking about it made it itch.

He hadn't had a chance to see the complete character in the mirror yet. Takamura had explained to him what it looked like, comparing it to the one on his ankle. His description was lacking, though, and Makoto kept on forgetting to look at it.

He settled the container on a ready chair, prying the cover open to find all the necessary equipment wrapped in neat bags. The plastic nets, the bowls, and the random prizes were inside. There wasn't much to the goldfish scooping game, and the little fish would arrive separately. A large basin had been dragged out of a storage closet from somewhere in the school and Honda was busy filling it with water from the sinks outside with her new acquaintances.

Makoto tore open the plastic bags containing the nets and stacked them on a desk. The other classes each had a different game. Class one had the empty tent with rows of chairs set up in front of it. Class three had the game involving chopsticks and a tiny object that had to be transferred from one person to the next without dropping it. Class four was in charge of the food stands, since it had the most students willing to participate. They had managed to receive fish cakes, shaved ice, yakitori, and takoyaki* from the staff that usually bought the food served in the cafeteria.

"There's no charge, so just give a net to whoever wants to try," Kawasaki had told him. Takamura and Makoto were arranged to switch places after half an hour, and he could see his roommate wandering around and investigating the open tent, surprisingly into the festivities now that someone had dragged out a radio to play some music. Evidently he had met a classmate to talk to while they had been planning the event yesterday.

Kawasaki was a different story. He slid into the desk chair next to Makoto and proceeded to jabber an endless amount of tales to him while they handed the colorful little nets to students who wanted to try.

Makoto watched the red goldfish quiver and dart about the plastic tub, scurrying away from the nets as fast as they could. A hand would delve below the water, carrying a helpless, squirming body on the thin plastic film to deposit in the bowls floating on the surface. They had set up two stations of this game, and most people gave it a try for fun.

He wondered if the teachers - and subsequently, the government - observed them scurrying about battlefield like this. Maybe some were quiet observers like him, contemplative, and maybe some laughed at their meager attempts to survive and wield their characters efficiently. It wouldn't surprise him if the cameras around the school did just that. What did they think of this spectacle?

"I miss this kind of thing!" one boy exclaimed. Makoto still didn't know who came from which class, but he thought he had seen the boy by class three's tent. Normally Makoto wouldn't take notice of people that weren't suspicious, but he'd seen this guy around the school often. Wherever he went, he made some commotion that caused the other students to cast disapproving glances at him. Like Kawasaki, he seemed to have not noticed the irritation on everyone else's faces. He was another blissfully ignorant person.

"I know, right? It reminds you of the festivals back home!" Kawasaki leaned over the tub and grinned in the boy's face. It might have unnerved any other person, but the guy simply smiled back and flicked the net against the water. He slid the plastic underneath a frantically swimming fish and scooped it up, depositing it in the red bowl floating next to it.

Makoto held a net out to a girl who wanted to try, someone who had come over from class one's tent. She had a strange, wide-brimmed heavily decorated with colorful sequins in one hand. It made him wonder what they were doing, but the crowd covered up the distance in between.

"Hey, Nozawa, this is Kasuga Minato from class three! Kasuga, this is Nozawa Makoto-kun from my class," Kawasaki beamed. Makoto raised an eyebrow at him. Since when had they become so friendly that he was allowed to drop the suffix on his name? He guessed that he should be prepared to hear Kawasaki call him by his first name soon.

Makoto bowed his head as the standoffish boy did the same. He had heard him bragging over pointless things he supposedly did in junior high school in the cafeteria yesterday around lunchtime. Like Kawasaki, his antics were relatively harmless, but extremely annoying after a while. "I met him after classes yesterday. He already got detention from his homeroom teacher! He had to clean the entire classroom by himself."

Maybe Kasuga was more annoying than normal people. The boy showed them a chuckle intended to sound embarrassed, but he seemed rather proud of his accomplishment instead. Makoto could see it in his eyes and wide smile. He wasn't much like Kawasaki after all. This one was a troublemaker, the type that instantly set Makoto on edge. He could never tell whether or not they were pretending, and their carefree attitude might have hidden any number of true intentions.

"Well, my classmates are happy for that," he laughed. "I didn't even do much. I just drew some fun pictures on the board. I was going to erase them."

"Hey, what's class one doing over there? Can you see them?" Kawasaki asked, pointing to the peak of the tent across the grounds. Instead of handing out the nets as he was supposed to, he had abandoned his pile and was playing the game himself. Makoto scowled at him, but he didn't notice in the slightest as he chatted with Kasuga.

"They're doing a play. I have no idea what it's about."

The ignorant will always be ignorant, he thought as Kawasaki accidentally poked and prodded the goldfish with the dangling net, the plastic film tearing in the water as the fish swam into it. He wondered what the staff would do with the fish when they were done today. Would they sell them at a real festival or to a shop? Would they just dispose of them regardless of the loss of money? It must have been a pitiful life for those fish, for all the joy and beauty they brought human beings.

Kawasaki dropped his net in the tub and it floated down to the bottom. Sighing, Makoto reached in to retrieve it, the goldfish brushing past his arm as they swarmed around him, little ghosts dancing across his skin with their scales giving off small glints in the sunlight. Kasuga tossed his net in the trashcan next to the tub and leaned his elbows precariously on the edge. Makoto scowled again and grabbed the red plastic bowl, gently depositing the fish back into the water.

He remembered the empty threats everyone uttered at home, wishes that certain people would stop coming to school, for others to just go and die. Sometimes people wished that they would die, instead of dealing with life's numerous, painful troubles. They were always empty threats. Even when someone was angry, no one truly wished death upon another if they were normal.

Now, though, in this school...that simple wasn't possible. Makoto gazed at the two boys, Kawasaki with his fluffed, auburn hair, Kasuga with his gelled and spiked dark hair. They were laughing hysterically about something trivial. Guilt was not the only emotion he would feel if he wished death upon either of the two. Something far deeper was at work. Any of them might die tomorrow when the Blight came, if it came at all. Someone, no matter how much they smiled, might decide to commit suicide tonight.

Makoto humored them, because it was the only human thing to do at the time. He handed the nets to Honda, who had been in charge of the other tub, and pulled Kawasaki up by his sleeve. Most of the students had shed their blazers and ties, now only in their dress shirts. The other boy gave him a quizzical look.

"Do you like shaved ice? I haven't had any since I was little," Makoto muttered, refusing to look away in embarrassment. Kawasaki still seemed confused for a moment, but he quickly recovered and leapt from his seat with a pleased smile on his face.

"And here I thought you were never going to relax! Of course I like shaved ice! Let's go; you too, Kasuga." Kawasaki took charge again, and Makoto's moment of initiative ended. He was glad to melt back into the role of the follower, the limp plush doll that Kawasaki dragged around at a whim. This time, a small smile was on his face, and he didn't allow himself to be dragged.

Takamura would probably be cursing his name later when someone went to find him to take over the game, but it thought it was worth it. Besides, Makoto was sure that he could win over Takamura any day, the boy was so easy to scare. By this point, he wouldn't even feel guilty about it. Maybe he should tell him ghost stories tonight. He knew a few creepy, bone-chilling ones from the time he and his junior high school homeroom went on a camping trip.

Kawasaki reached over the crowd, as he was a bit taller than the other two, and ordered their shaved ices. There were small tabletop grills and students in bandanas standing over them, turning over glazed takoyaki balls and sticks of yakitori. The thick smoke from the burning coals curled into the air, carrying a distinctive scent of food and fire. A girl held a cup of shaved ice and poured the red cherry flavoring on top, and then stuck a small, thin spoon in the side before handing it to Kawasaki.

When they walked away, nibbling on the cold desert, they passed class three's game and the tubs full of shimmering red fish. Class one's play, as Kasuga had told them, seemed pointless, but funny. He saw the girl with the strangely pattered hat again, and no one from that class had their uniform on.

That's what this day was about - pointless fun. It wasn't necessarily a way to get to know each other, because no one wanted to think about who might be graduating with them at the end of the year. Even Takamura, for all his neurotic, mistrusting behavior, and Makoto's usually blank expressions and suspicions, had some degree of fun. They could afford to be pretty little fish today, clustered in a pool without a care in the world. If someone picked them up, that was fine. If they swam in circles and avoided capture, then that was fine, too. Because they were fish, they couldn't care for one way or the other, nor did they have a choice in the matter.

That night, Makoto dug through his memories of the class trip he had attended two years ago and forced Takamura to keep the lights turned off and the curtains drawn. He told him scary stories about eerie faces and gleaming eyes in mirrors, of the strange sounds a forest emitted at night and the lost souls that wandered them. After Takamura was done hiding under the covers and throwing pillows at him to shut him up, he told stories of demons and spirits, of the shrines that littered Kyoto and of the tales of old that had died in Makoto's neighborhood outside Tokyo.


- This is just a fun chapter. I wanted to include a school festival, but it ended up being very tiny. It appears that the goldfish scooping game along with other variants (turtles, chicks, plastic balls) are popular for festivals in Japan.

* Yakitori and takoyaki: Yakitori is skewered grilled chicken and takoyaki are octopus fish balls. They are very popular festival foods. Shaved ice also seems to fall into this category, not to be mistaken with snow cones.