The other bandits were not quick to accept me. Hotaru, the one I had burned, was injured beyond anyone's ability to repair him. He became very ill, unable to pull his share of work or even move. Due to the nomadic nature of the group, this was much to his misfortune.
On the day they were to relocate, the boss announced that he would be left behind. "He's useless," was the gruff explanation. "What's the point of having him along?"
I could feel the others looking at me. I, too, was essentially useless. And yet, by some disturbing twist of mercy, their leader was aiding me instead of their trusted comrade.
Still, their anger was not directed at him. It was my fault, after all. I had fallen from the sky and complicated their worlds, and none of us, including me, was very happy about it.
Nestled in a satchel slung over their leader's back, they would not touch me. Already wary of me, the added threat of his wrath was enough to dissuade them for now.
But I knew that the moment I was separated from him, they would try to make me pay for what I had done to them.
The opportunity came soon enough.
The boss would leave. He left often. Sometimes he would take others with him, and sometimes they would come back with shiny ornaments, which he delightedly referred to as "treasures." I did not know what was so special about these objects. I did not understand the relevance of a color or a texture or a shape. Looking back, I suppose it was all very ironic, me holding that gem while not understanding their obsession.
Anything can have meaning.
And quite simply, it was a relief to hear the voices of the men as they babbled on about how much they could sell these things for and what else they might be able to steal. They were certainly not angry with me; they were not angry at all.
The words did not mean anything, but the inflection did.
It was an interaction. Something I could depend on, for now.
Those conversations never lasted long. The men would come and go, though they never all left at once. If the boss took a group with him, he would always leave one behind. He would tell that person—whoever it was—to watch over me. He would say, "If any of the loot is missing when I get back here, you'll be sorry. Oh, and keep an eye on the kid."
I didn't know what to think of this but felt it was an improvement from being tossed off of a cliff. I allowed myself to be thankful that anyone remembered me at all.
That was my first mistake: forgetting that no one cared.
My second mistake was underestimating the power of grief.
The days passed quite uneventfully until the afternoon in which Noboru was assigned to look after me. A large part of me expected him to have gotten over the other bandit's death by now, or at least to have forgiven me for it. It was that hopeful part of myself that had not yet be guillotined by reality. Maybe I wouldn't have forgiven myself either, if I were him. Maybe I didn't grasp the concept of camaraderie. Maybe I didn't understand how close he had been to the one I'd killed. Maybe I was just too young and too broken.
He spent hours ignoring me, unsurprisingly. I had come to realize that generally I was destined to be ignored unless I was setting someone on fire, which I had not done in several weeks.
Incidentally, several weeks had only served to worsen the pain of loss for Noboru.
When the red sun was high in the sky so that the temperature inside the cave classified as sweltering—something I found highly enjoyable—he stalked in, barefoot, and began to dig through one of the many piles of rubbish that had accumulated throughout the previous days. He grumbled, "Fuck—where the fuck—where the fuck is it—" and then, with a victorious grunt, he pulled out a knife.
He walked over and waved it above me. "Time fer a bath!" he announced.
Despite my unquestionably infantile state, I was quite confident that baths and knives had very little in common.
Noboru lifted me from the cave floor. Aside from the cloth wrapped around my groin, I was entirely nude, and I could not tell if the slickness on my skin was my sweat or his as he carried me to the riverside. Unlike our previous camp site, this one contained copious amounts of foliage, and Noboru tripped over errant roots and wet clumps of grass along the way, flailing the knife in the air, his erratic movements threatening to free me from his grasp.
When he finally knelt by the water's edge, he set the knife down. He loosened the cloth until it fell away from my body. He dunked me in the water.
Again.
Again.
My delicate feet hit the clay bottom of the river bed, the rocks scraping the skin of my legs. I tried to hold my breath but inhaled water anyway—could not avoid it. And when he had finally stopped submersing me, when I was finally able to blink the moisture from my eyes, I saw the irate determination in his and I felt something hot bubbling in my chest. Warning, warning.
He picked up the knife, holding the tip of the rusted old blade mere inches from my face. His hand shook, and the object quivered—face, neck, face, neck. As though he were nearly overwhelmed at the difficulty of the decision he was now having to make.
I wanted to hurt him. Instinctively, my body was ready to end this ridiculous river-side escapade altogether, but I could not.
If I did, he wouldn't want me anymore.
The fingers of Noboru's other hand dug into my flesh, but I did nothing, did not even make a sound.
He screamed at me.
Then he threw me on the ground and violently began to sob.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the voices of the witches echoed: "Do it, do it, he'll kill us all!"
I merely stared as Noboru uttered one last cry and inserted the knife into his own chest. He fell to the ground, and I watched until most of the blood had pooled out.
The danger had passed. I wanted to go back to the cave.
I held my mother's tear for dear life.
