11 / Million Little Pieces

His head was clear, his alcohol finished. The research lay before him; words, words, words, none of them made sense. The past, the present, Franchouchou, the dead. None of it made sense.

Okoba is already asking himself questions. Questions that made no sense but explained so much.

Can the dead come back to life?

No. Of course not. What a stupid question!

Okoba was still probably suffering from all that drinking last night. Yeah. That was it. The alcohol was making him question life again. He was the stereotypical drunk. Yeah. Yeah. That was all.

...but what about reincarnation?

Again!?

Okoba shook his head.

He was already regretting those bottles, regretting those sleepless nights, regretting this research.

The man was willing to believe that stupid question made sense...for like three members of Franchouchou, maybe four, but the rest of them…? Distant cousins? Family no one cared to talk about?

Okoba breath a sigh of relief. That last part made sense. It was reasonable to believe the girls had family members that looked exactly alike. Yeah. It made sense, right?

The dead can't come back to life. They just couldn't.

Maybe, Okoba thinks, eyeing the bottle nearby. I should stop drinking on weekends…

(but what about the dead?)


Genji let out a loud yawn as he stretched.

It was a new day in Karatsu, but Genji felt he hadn't slept at all.

The young man took a look around the apartment, three weeks old and it was already a mess.

The bed was a disaster, it's covers and pillows scattered all over. There were empty water bottles on the counter, their companions dirty dishes and empty ramen cups lay with them, some on the sink, some on the floor. A laptop was lonely on top of the bedside table, papers, ramen cups surrounding it. Clothes were on the ground, or had been unceremoniously thrown into the small closet as if that would make them disappear from the face of the earth. There were a few other things here and there, sound equipment, an electronic piano, a guitar, and a pair of small speakers; his old things from back home.

All in all, the apartment was a mess.

Home sweet home, Genji guessed.

He figured he'll clean it in a month or so...or before he left.

Genji turned towards a stack of papers by the table and examined them.

Monster sighting, hauntings in springs hotels, zombies, Franchouchou, what an odd collection they all made. The flyer of the girl with the frozen smile lay next to the stack of papers, already crumbled and looking worn by all the folding and unfolding it had gone through throughout Genji's stay in Saga. Next to it, was a small calendar he had bought off of the internet. It was a cute thing. It had pictures of the smiling (dead) girl, frozen in time, frozen smiles, frozen amongst a few pages along with those others.

Genji suddenly shook his head.

He was an idiot.

Three concerts, three. He had missed three concerts. All because he had lost his nerve at the last minute.

If only Genji had gone to those concerts and met that girl face to face, he would have confirmed himself of a truth he knew all along and then he would pack up his bags, clean the filthy mess of an apartment and go back home. That had been the plan, anyway. It had been a stupid plan but it was the only thing he had.

Genji still wasn't sure what he'll find. He didn't even know why he was still bothered by it all. And yet, as he stared at the girl with the frozen smile, his heart almost stopped.

She looked like Sakura and yet it couldn't be her. It wasn't her. It had never been her.

Sakura Minamoto had died eleven years ago. She had gotten hit by a truck and had had her head cracked open like an egg, spilling her life all over the hard, cold pavement.

They had done the best to fix her for the wake; broken bones had been mended and moved, glass had been removed, blood had been cleaned, but that scar, the scar of the dead had still been there. The ugly reminder of her death was the only thing they weren't able to fix.

And here was this girl, this girl with the same smile, no scar, no death, no nothing.

So, what was wrong?

Genji let out a sigh, blinking, before looking around; he spots the packet of cigarettes on the other bedside table. He moves to reach for it, catches sight of the flyer, and then, he stops.

He's going crazy, the young man suddenly thinks, turning towards the girl in the flyer, the girl with the frozen smile and shining blue eyes.

(what is he looking for?)


Dead, alive, dead, alive...dead, dead, dead.

Okoba felt he was going insane. He had dead girls on one side and living girls in the other and nothing was making sense. They look alike, except one group was dead and the other, surely wasn't.

So, he went back to work; if the information wouldn't do, perhaps music would. He stared at Konno and Mizuno's pictures before nodding, sighing deeply and searching.

The man found clips from a few of Franchouchou's performances, put them aside in a seperate window on the browser before searching for Junko Konno. He found an old clip of a television show where Konno had given a performance, the year had been 1983, just a few months before her untimely demise. Then, he searched for Ai Mizuno, and seconds later, found a recording of a performance from Arpino, 2007. It was their best hit, "Fantastic Lovers". He listened to Konno's performance before moving to Mizuno's song. He listened to each song once, twice, three times, to make sure his ears weren't playing tricks on him.

Then, he played Franchouchou's song, "Atsuku Nare"; he listened, then, he compared and contrasted with Mizuno's song from 2007 and Konno's song from '83.

He found the match. Well, it was actually two, or rather, it was Three and Four, like he had somehow expected.

Ai Mizuno for Three. Junko Konno for Four.

...goddammit all.

Could he had heard wrong? No. He had done this twice, three times, four, until he realized an hour had gone by and the voices were still the same.

Dead here, living there.

Okoba was sweating now. He was starting to ask those questions again, itching for the bottle again.

Ghosts, ghosts everywhere.

(but could the dead come back to life?)


The dead couldn't come back to life, Genji knew.

It was stupid to think the impossible could happen, so why, why did he do all this research for? Why keep that old flyer and hide it for so long in his pocket?

What was it about that girl with the frozen smile that made him ask the stupidest of questions?

Maybe he was wrong (obviously). Maybe he was being stupid (most likely). Maybe he was trying to find something that wasn't really there (because it wasn't).

He grabbed a few papers from the pile and stared at them. The concerts, the stories about the living dead, that zombie storyline. Nothing made sense. And yet, here he was, trying to make sense of that which was impossible. He threw the papers away, and stared at the wall.

Was it the guilt, he wondered. That had to be it. Guilt.

Guilt at his behavior in the past, guilt of what happened after.

His last interaction with his older sister had been when Sakura had been visiting; it was common for her to do that once a month, maybe twice, sometimes staying over the weekend with him and his mother and their mother's boyfriend. Ever since his parents separated it had always been like this. Sakura had stuck around with the old man, he had stuck with their mother. And Genji still remembers hating Sakura for that.

Back then, Genji had been a little shit. He knew that now. The separation, the divorce, he had taken things out of proportion and had gotten angry at the world, at the old man, at his sister.

Their parents, even after it all, could still talk to each other, laugh at the old times, but their kids, nah, nah, their kids were another thing entirely. The son hated the daughter, and that was that. Little shit of a son had felt betrayed his sister had chosen the old man instead of him; it had cut deep, tore them apart, and despite the sister wanting (trying) to make things right again between the two of them, the brother wouldn't hear of it. And then, one day, the sister died, died knowing her brother hated her, died knowing he'll probably not care. It hadn't been fair, really.

He still remembered crying out for a sister that wouldn't come back. Still remembers the dreams, still remembers how Sakura would haunt him. She was always smiling, offering him a ticket to that concert for some band, asking, sometimes begging, him to go with her...and suddenly, a loud horn, and the truck would appear to take her away as it had done in life and then, the dream was over.

Genji shook his head.

It was the guilt again. That's what this all had been about.

He had been young, young and cruel. He had ignored his sister and lost her the next day. Loss and guilt. Guilt and loss.

Nothing would have changed if he had said 'yes' to Sakura's invitation, Genji knew. He reached for the flyer, the flyer with the girl that looked so much like his sister, the girl that smiled just like her.

Sakura was dead.

She had died almost instantly, they said. She hadn't suffered, they said.

Fuck that. She had suffered, all right. You couldn't just take it slow as a car hit you and left you there, lying in a pool of your own blood for the whole world to see.

Sakura had suffered...she was dead. And Genji sometimes wondered if she had suffered more because of how she died or because of how much her brother had once hated her so?

Genji glared at the flyer, not even bothering with the tears that spilled out of his eyes. They fell, tiny drops, big drops, over the image of the girl with the frozen smile. And then, he squashed the flyer with his fist, the other hand covering his face as he sobbed. "...what...what the hell am I doing…?"

Dead was dead. Sakura was dead.

And the dead couldn't come back to life.


The coffee had not made things better, Okoba would realize a few hours later.

The ghosts were still there. Still staring back, frozen smiles, frozen pictures. A dead parade.

And now, here he was again, researching, unable to let the dead rest, unable to give himself a break. He was on a caffeine buzz. He couldn't rest, couldn't sleep. He just kept seeing ghosts.

And then, even the coffee couldn't save him.

Okoba read and reread the information before him; it was a blog, a blog he had paid little attention to during his search that began all those days back.

The blog was mainly about death metal, daily lives of metal heads, those sorts of things but hidden deep within pages and pages of news, articles, concerts, videos, was a small little thing, something about Death Musume and Green Face and finally, Franchouchou. They talked about that first performance, screams, headbanging, then, the second one, a performance that ended with a rap, and later, the name change to Franchouchou.

He took in everything written in the blog, the argument that gave birth to a rap battle, the storyline about zombies, zombies, zombies, the dead, dead, dead.

Okoba felt like he was falling.

He drank more coffee and then, spit it out.

The man got to work again, searching for monster sightings in Saga, going on a limb, going on crazy street now until finally he found something; a haunting in a hot springs hotel, monster sightings in the streets of Karatsu, and then, he found the article.

"Do the dead walk among us?" the title read.

The article was almost two years old, it had been hidden behind articles of daily life in Saga, food recipes and odds and ends. It detailed the mysterious appearance of a strange girl. Her skin was rotting, she was moaning, groaning, howling at the moon. The witnesses were a couple out on a date in the late hours of the night, and they say that the girl just jumped at them. She spit, she growled, she showed sharp teeth. They were terrified for their lives and ran off before she could catch them. The couple had not seen her face but one of them recognized the clothes she wore, it had been a dark blue school uniform and an odd colored ribbon tied on her hair. The only thing the couple could agree on was that she was terrifying and that her eyes were blood red.

Dead, dead...dead parade.

Okoba was being stupid...wasn't he?

...he needed more information.

No matter what he thought now, or what he'll think in a month's time, he needed more information.

These stories were just stories, rumors, nothing more.

After all, the dead couldn't come back to life.

Everything was just a big coincidence.

(it had to be)


Five was a goddess.

It was true, it was a fact. Koji Kaneda knew it so. He felt it in his heart, in his veins, in his mind, in his soul, in his everything.

She was perfect. Beautiful hair, beautiful face, beautiful figure, beautiful voice, everything about her was perfect, out of this world.

Koji was in love. And his goddess, perhaps she was too. He felt it, he knew.

Five had seen him, stared at him, once, twice, three, four, five times now. And Koji had seen her too, admired her from a distance. He had seen her in concerts, in meet-and-greets, in that stupid bike race from a few days ago, on that Drive-In Tori event, he saw her everywhere.

His room was covered with her image; every photo he had taken, every photo he had bought, everything, glued to his walls, to his ceiling, into his heart.

She was beautiful, that was a fact.

Koji loved her, wanted her, and he was so sure she wanted him too.

It was too bad those girls surrounded his goddess, kept her away from him, kept them apart.

He hated them all; the young one, that girl with the pink hair, the bitch in blonde, the girl with flowers in her hair, the silent one that hides and that weirdo in the back. All of them surrounded, confined his goddess. All of them keep her away from him.

Five needs him, Koji sees it in her eyes.

She's asking for his help, imploring him, begging him, to get her away from this strangers, this fools, this filth.

Koji knows what he has to do and no one is getting in his way.

He'll make sure of that.


"In the early hours of the day, a local hiker was attacked by...what he describes, a monster. According to the man, the monster appeared from out of nowhere, slashed his arm and disappeared into the Nijinomatsubara forest...police theorize that what the hiker had seen was probably the bear that had been reported a few months ago near the foot of Kagamiyama and it's surrounding woods..."

"...the bear is considered dangerous as it has already left many animal carcasses in its wake."

"Police have advised the public not to head to either Kagamiyama or Nijinomatsubara until further notice…"

"...the hiker still maintains that what he saw near the pine forest was a monster, not a bear."