Chapter 17: December 24
My father didn't wear a uniform. He didn't have a helmet or dog tags and he's never held a rifle in his life. He hasn't marched through jungles or desert valleys, wondering if the next IED is meant for him. Hasn't watched bullets make chunks of meat out of a company of friends. His war was different, but just as visceral as all of the conflicts before it. When he finally made his way out, when he was able to stick his head up above the water and breathe, everyone waved off the sacrifices he had to make and the wounds he had to endure. They told him he was useless for fighting in such a thoughtless war against the Angels. I was one of them.
Upstairs on my work table, sitting right next to the pills, is the death directive he gave me over a week ago. The envelope is still crinkled a bit, otherwise untouched. I've thought of "losing" it, just getting rid of the thing or telling him I want nothing to do with it. He's been in his room in the evenings, but with the door open, fingers working diligently at his computer.
"How much more do you have to go?" I ask from the doorway.
"Maybe ten pages or so," he says, an over the shoulder glance inviting me in.
His little corner isn't the same as it used to be. Not just because the photos are gone or because it's been painted the same sunshine yellow I grew up with. His space is uncluttered, set with purpose. A place he can be comfortable and drift instead of drown.
"So when do I get to read it?"
A tenderness eases over his eyes. He stands, clasping my shoulder. "Someday."
There's still so much he isn't ready to dredge up again. I think I can understand, at least a little. I think of all that I know now, how much of it I have yet to know, and it amazes me he was ever able to sit down and put it all to paper. That he was ever able to come back from any of it. I want to help put a close to that chapter of his life, and maybe let him have a few years of peace before he goes. First, there's something I need to see.
My last therapist asked why I wanted to know about the war. I always thought it would let me know my parents and grasp some sense of who I thought they must have been. That can't ever really happen. For that, I have to go where it all unfolded. If I want to catch a glimpse of those people my parents used to be, I have to go where the war was.
I have to see it.
The sky melds from dawn to dusk, slow and touched with an ease I'm not used to. Somehow the shadows along the mountains are foreboding as I debate over and over how to go about this. Dad's entangled mom in a game of Go at the kitchen table. She hates board games. The only one I've ever seen her play is scrabble. She likes putting a puzzle together with limited pieces. That and she likes to cheat with the rule that German words count too.
Dad is playing as black, snapping pieces down quickly and decisively, while mom agonizes over each white piece she commits to the grand strategy.
Standing in front of my parents in the glare of the back windows – where I start to bake – the words burn and the reasoning I'd planned on sharing out loud, to make sense of it, turns into a lot of useless thinking.
"I'm going to Tokyo-3," I say and both of them stop talking about, what was it? the lifespan of cats? "I mean, Hakone, the crater..."
Neither of them says a word, at first. With the temperature inside and the fireplace going, I'm starting to sweat. It would be nice if I could actually blame the heat. I start to itch for pills I spent a back and forth with half an hour before.
"What for?" mother asks, incredulous. "It's just a big hole in the ground," she says, in a way that suggests it's much more than just a big hole in the ground. It has to be. I haven't been able to stop thinking about how Yoshiya put himself between me and Nagato. Before he could finish talking about that last battle. What didn't he want me to hear?
"Do you... not want me to go?" I ask.
"I don't see why that matters," she says, expression dancing between cloudy and scathing. "You're going regardless, aren't you?"
"Maybe." I don't tell her I've already bought the ticket.
She hums, tosses some of her hair back and focuses instead on the game. "If you'd like to see an empty crater in the middle of nowhere, that's your choice."
I look to my father, who has also been reabsorbed in the game, chin pinched between his thumb and index. Considering the board and his pieces, he sets a black stone down between hers.
"Scheisse!"
Dad wipes a hand over his mouth, trying to hide his mirth. She fumes, in a way we can't help but laugh at and, feeling cornered, she pouts and starts to play the game by herself.
"I don't like either of you," she grumbles. As much as she jokes, it's another of her many facades, put up to hide her melancholy.
Standing, Dad steers me outside and Myshka pads atop the table to console his adoptive mother. The watermelon vines are looking healthier today. I nudge some of the shriveling bits with a foot.
"There's something I want you to see in Hokkaido," dad says, a hand on my back as we walk.
"Yeah?"
"They found it just off the shoreline. A part of your mother's Eva."
Even now the word sends shivers down my spine. Sure, I've seen pictures, heard some stories, but this is going to be real. A part of my mother I've never seen in person before. The part of her only he knows.
I'm finally going to see the Eva.
"Why don't you come with me dad? We can see it together."
He takes his hand away, resting it in a pocket. The thought stirs a chord in him. Until he shakes his head. "No, I... no. I don't want to see it again." He jabs my chest. "I want you to see it."
He's just as uncertain about the trip as mom. They've tried for so long to move past it. To be more than throw away toy soldiers. I don't want us to be defined by the war anymore.
"Okay, dad. I will."
The first time I ever saw Japan was sitting in Mr Ryan's second period history class, through grainy film dried of color. It showed us a country in its prime, preparing to go to war. I saw the cherry blossom trees floating at the edges of the old Sengoku castles, while soldiers paraded through the temple districts in traditional Samurai garb. Women and children in Osaka danced for the Tenjin Matsuri, long before it had been taken under water. Back when Japan had bowed to an Emperor.
Since then, I've had this vision of what Japan is supposed to be. Even after the Great Defeat, it was a nation that clutched doggedly to its culture and ideals. I can't remember wanting anything more than that. To have a place and a people that belonged to me.
Even that image was soured by the war which, through my father, showed me some horrible, dark place that would inevitably leave me broken. So I have this notion. This absurd idea that if I go to the islands, I can take a piece of my father back with me – and maybe make us both a little more whole.
The plane tilts, light gees pushing me into the cushioned seat. As we pass over the southern tip of Hokkaido, I can see Old Hakodate through the window far below, a lone star fort amidst a half sea-swallowed city standing in memoriam. The new capital, Obihiro, cuts a crescent arc in the island. Even as high up as we are, I can clearly make out the rigid order of skyscrapers, comparable in size only to those in Chicago-2. Each one a province all its own.
The northern island itself has turned white, snow spreading over the mainland and all along the coast facing the Sea of Japan, far down by Kyushu. The mountains, reaching in jagged arcs throughout, stop the ice from pooling its decaying touch to the lush green on the other side.
As we land, the sheer size and scope of the city becomes daunting. Metal mountains as likely to take me under as any stone peak in Arizona. The smell hits me first. A salted stink, mingled with the sting of sanitizer and the occasional whiff of oil. The airport is bustling, but not overflowing. Customs still takes an hour. The man at the bulletproof glass window stamps my passport and mutters, "welcome home," before waving me along.
Welcome home.
Every tower appears to grow with every step I take, the sky above belonging to some other world. People don't pay one another much mind. Constant herds moving in singular destinations through compact streets, pretending there is no one and nothing around them. Every sidewalk and overpass has the sense of being apart of a much larger design. Nothing is put down here by accident. All of it has purpose. The very road I walk down is a funnel to red pillars holding arched roofs aloft, stacked atop one another and heavy with an austere sense of age. It's flanked by statues of creatures with wide eyes and mouths barring rows of teeth, exaggerated and colorful. On the other side is a wide bowl with burning incense, from which passing commuters cup the smoke and wave it over their faces.
Everyone bows here too. It feels archaic and forced. Done more out of homage to the way things used to be than because it carries any cultural significance. Even Obihiro, like Misato's bar, aches for a time remembered.
I don't dare try and navigate the railways that cut through the city blocks. For now, It's easy enough to hitch a cab through my phone. The driver's Japanese is precise and curt, making me sound, by comparison, uncultured I suppose. He even gnaws his teeth a little, eyebrows bent, when I stutter the address to him.
The drive is short and barbed.
As we pull up to my stop and I step out, I decide to bow. What is too low? What isn't low enough? When does one even bow? Too late for that now.
The driver tries very hard not to scowl. As he pulls away, I catch conversation down the sidewalk from a pair of older women, older at least than my mother.
"Such foolishness. Foreigners coming over and pretending."
"Should you really be talking that way?"
"It's not as though he speaks it. He's not really Japanese, not anymore. He's been Americanized like the rest of them."
"It's a disgrace to the ancestors."
"Those who have forgotten their heritage don't belong here."
I decide not to say anything and move on. It was a silly thing to do. What was I thinking? I may look Japanese, I may speak it, but I'm just a foreigner here. This isn't home. Not really.
The Suzahara's have moved out of the valleys to the north and into the city proper now. The message from Hachiro points me a hundred floors up one of Obihiro's towering complexes. Being inside one is a thought too odd to wrap my mind around, coming from so low on the ground. The corridors are spacious and lined with shopping centers and restaurants, broken up occasionally by housing blocks.
Most of the workers and attendants in these miniature towns are from the States. It's easy to tell because of how flat American Japanese sounds, lacking all of the higher inflections, unlike the refugees brought back from China. The former, wearings faces of constant deference, have hands that twitch just before they go to bow. They apologize for what seems like everything.
"Sorry the food is lukewarm."
"No I don't have anything cheaper, my apologies."
"I'm sorry, I know the wrinkles on my shirt are unsightly."
"The water isn't cold enough? I'm so sorry."
"I'm not walking on all fours? Oh how rude, please forgive me!"
Okay, the last one I made up, but that's what they might as well be saying. There's a desperation to be accepted that bleeds into every jittering step and nervous smile, and it's so terribly clear those who survived China and the Balkans have little interest in holding them as equal. Their eyes glaze over when they speak, seeing but not listening. A speck of dust on gold-rimmed glasses.
It's a relief when I finally see a welcoming face in Aunt Hikari. Her long hair, tied low, is almost down to her waist now. We hug, but as I try to step further in she isn't content to let go. Remembering herself, she steps away, smiling that ever bright smile of hers.
"Look how much you've grown," she says with a sniff, swiping at the edges of her eyes as they redden. She touches me and says it again. That's Aunt Hikari. So emotional. Ambling down the hall is Toji, hair receding and now completely gray, save for a few streaks of black left over.
"Hey, I think I remember this guy," he says, rubbing his chin. "What was his name? Kazuki? Kaguya?"
Hikari tsks, delivering a light backhand to his chest and still trying not to break into tears. He smiles and puts an arm around her. Apologizing, she retreats to the kitchen to prepare us tea. Toji shakes my hand, laughing.
"Here now, you've upset my wife. You're gonna' have to stay the whole year comin' up."
"I think you'd have to fight my mother for that."
Toji guffaws, slapping my back as he leads us into the kitchen. "I've offered to do as much before. I tell you, that woman..."
"Hush," Hikari says, trying to hide behind the guise of stern wife, "you're too easy to goad and she knows it."
"It ain't me who's got a problem," he says, settling down at their square table. Everything is square. From the floor plan, to the kitchen and the tiles and the lights. Even the butsudan, black and lined with gold, is square. Images of cranes and dragons and reeds flow within each box, chimes hanging on either side of the stand where the incense is burned.
"So," Toji says, nodding to the shrine, "you Shinto yet?"
Oh, boy. I force a chuckle. "Uh, well no. I mean, not really..." anything else dies before it can grow into a fledgling thought. I haven't missed this part of the visits, the partly innocent and partly interrogation-like questions about my faith, or lack thereof.
Hikari spares her husband a withering look and he shrugs. A tray of tea in her hands, she sets it down between us and starts to pour, saying, "So long as you're not with one of those Third Impact cults."
My Aunt doesn't outright disagree with anyone, only politely disapproves – and will certainly tell you how much she disapproves – all without giving you a hard argument. I could probably flip this table and she'd sip her tea and, with a sigh, say, "I don't agree with what you did, but I suppose that's your right to do it."
"Most of them aren't so bad," I say, shrugging off my jacket and draping it on the backrest.
Toji huffs. "Tell that to the Wolf Brigade."
At my questioning glance Hikari makes a flat grimace, which her husband completely misses.
"It's an organization of temple monks that have a co-policing agreement with the NPA," he explains. "No one openly practices the Trinity religions here."
Hikari, thankfully, steers us away from politics and religions, gushing instead about Sakura's wedding coming up next May. She was another late returnee and is still fairly young. I recall a bubbly girl, whom I may or may not have crushed on as an adolescent boy. Back when she used to babysit me and her nephews in Louisiana.
Toji crosses his arms, but nods. "Reese is alright. I'd have preferred someone from the Defense Force, but she's always had a soft spot for sailors like our granddad."
That's the most flattering praise I've ever heard come out of Uncle Toji's mouth about any of Sakura's boyfriends. 54 years old and he's still the stubborn, overprotective older brother.
After Hikari makes us riceballs, which I manage not to scarf down like a pig, Toji shows me to the guest room. It's actually just the third youngest's old room, framed paintings done in a wild and abstract style hanging from the walls.
The trip out to the main island won't take more than a day and I don't have to meet my contact until tomorrow. People buy passage over all the time through "tour guides", men and women who'll ferry anyone over for a fee. The cost is largely for bribing their way past checkpoints. The UN has kept a token policing force hanging around, none of which really want to be here anymore.
Back in the kitchen we talk more, namely about my parents. Toji rubs the callouses of his finger tips, formed after decades of working the Orleans canals, and asks about dad in a quieter way. Hikari makes us more tea and I feel too rude asking for coffee instead. She doesn't comment much when I mention mother, but listens intently, shoulders high as she holds her tea cup close.
"We'd really like to see them again," Toji says, touching the knee of his prosthetic. No one speaks for a while and the butsudan in the corner draws my stare. Within is a picture of Hiro in his dress blues, so serious and steady. Not at all the curse-slinging hood-rat I grew up with. We were about the same age when we met. He was born in winter and, like Yuki, I found in him someone who struggled to find their place just as much as me. Up until he joined the US Army. Happened the very minute he turned eighteen, completely on a whim. We'd been sitting on his back porch and he was smoking a birthday gift from Hachiro: a pack of Italian cigarettes. Hikari was having it out with him in the house for it.
Hiro stood up, flicked his bud to the sidewalk and said, "Fuck it."
He marched right down to the recruitment office and the next morning, hot off a fight with his father, boarded the bus out to basic. They made up when he finished training and from every night on, Toji would annoy the patrons in bars across Louisiana talking about his son the Army man. We'd joke that it wouldn't be long before he was in all the Cajun city jazz. "Who 'dat Jerry Army man? Hiro-man! Hiro-man!"
"He'd have been twenty-seven a few days ago," Hikari says, a smirk failing to reach. Toji takes her hand, and that at least brings her sad smile free.
For six years I've been cut off from the world. I was apart of it, but not living in it, shuffling from one needless task to the next trying to find my way. I could have made the time to come to the funeral. I should have made time. Hiro deserved that.
He deserved to have another person there to remember him.
Nightlife in Obihiro crawls with neon light, blending together and blossoming amber-gold off the windows. Motorcycles scream by as I walk out, streets echoing with the hoots and hollers of their riders. One of them has a red jacket with the numbers 02 painted in white on the back. A pair of police cars aren't far behind.
Panels that, during the day showcase directories and broadcast the goings-on in a city too large for itself, display public announcements made by a woman with a smile that's too bright as she encourages citizens to be wary of cultist activity and report any suspicious behavior to the authorities. They roll by in armored trucks and on the gardened skyways, or at intersections where I can spot the wolves, decked in black riot armor with air filter masks and goggles. The reflective plating makes them glow red in the electric light.
As I walk, I sense the city changing. Not even the wolves can witness every narrow street or crowded underpass. From somewhere on the next block over, I can hear drums, a pounding rhythm that feels like a heartbeat. Obihiro is divided into 49 special wards. Each with its own identity in a place no one can say for sure where Japan begins or ends.
Crossing through Otofuke, the hiss of the rail cars above the city's deep canyons turn into a roar, somehow drowned out by the shouting of stumbling drunks and alleyway singing parlors. Their cadence melds with Memuro, where merchants chant their limited-time-only sales on fresh goods, enticing families to gather around bowl shaped trash-bins while ripping at crab shells or sinking their teeth into the spilling juices of watermelons. A fat, bloated economy where consumers purchase as hungrily as the melon eaters stuff their faces.
Talking over everything are the adverts, men with boisterous voices shouting down to the inhabitants all there is to buy and make their lives wonderful and carefree. Behind these and sitting beneath the industrial towers are store fronts extending on the walkways ten stories up. They fade as one enters Shimizu, put under by the droning chorus of monks making their way through these pillars of civilization with all the unhurried intent of a river cutting through a gorge. The bells of the shrines, carried with them to purify the city, drape chills over my shoulders with each jingle.
It's here that I brave the railways rather than face the taxi drivers and their sneers, navigating a circuit board network out to Mount Tsurugi. The place has been turned into Obihiro's graveyard, a cemetery built atop tiers like the walls of Japan's old castles. Each level has a crooked order to it, jagged with square pillars of varying sizes and not unlike the city whose dead it houses.
Here I meet a man I don't have to worry about bows or handshakes with. We hug in a way that seems more like a contest to break one another's back than a warm greeting. Hachiro steps back, holding my shoulders and grinning his father's grin. He has his long hair combed back now, a halfhearted attempt to hide a growing bald spot.
"Goddamn Kazuya, it's good to see you," he says.
"Wish I could say the same."
He chortles, stepping back and motioning at the bag by my feet. "What'd you bring?"
"Only the best." It was difficult to find, but I managed to hunt down a bottle of Canadian Whiskey. It's been a favorite of the Suzahara's ever since I smuggled some down from Misato's stash. For Hiro, I'll suffer the swill.
It isn't long before the second eldest, Katsuo, shows up – bringing Masaru and Noboru with.
"Hey, Hachiro!" Katsuo calls, "how did you get your chains off? Won't Rina be sending out a search party?"
Hachiro's expression clouds. He doesn't like talking about his wife. This prompts a bout of less-than-brotherly insults, which is – even after all this time – nothing out of the ordinary. He and Katsuo have been fighting since they were kids.
"Alright, quit pissing around and walk, huh? We're here to see Hiro." Masaru, peacekeeper since he was twelve, says with a laugh and a touch to Hachiro's shoulder. He's sharper than his brothers, toying with the cuffs of a fitted suit. What does he do now? Something in Network Marketing, I think.
"Where's Rokurou?" Hachiro asks, scouting the troop.
"He's at some fucking rally in Nakasatsunai district," Katsuo says, throwing a hand, "protesting the Wolf Brigade."
"I oughta' go down there hand him over to 'em. 'Here officer, please arrest my idiot brother...'"
Masaru shrugs. "He's going through that whole idealist phase. He'll get over it once he grows up a little."
Noboru shakes his head. "All he's doing is upsetting mom..."
It's unanimously agreed then that tonight their next stop will be to the rally to knock some sense into their younger brother. Already waiting by Hiro's grave are Takeshi and Akio, who has just turned 17. Hanging off the arm of the former is a girl who, by the jeering and absolute disregard for manners, has already been taken on as a sister by the others. Hachiro likes her 'cause she can hold her liquor.
Akio is quiet, but loosens up when his brothers gather around, as if given permission to be himself.
A hand brushing his shaved head, he asks, "Is Rokurou–?"
"Forget it," Hachiro snaps. "We're going out later to belt him."
Akio swells, only to close his mouth, protest leaving as an unheard sigh. At Masaru's prodding, he reluctantly talks about his progress with the temple, where he is training to be a monk. I've never known the older brothers to do more than scoff at the idea of upholding the family religion, but when it comes to Akio, they're excited and all too proud. Like when Hiro left for the Army.
Drinking begins promptly. Even Akio takes a shot. With Hachiro around there's no getting past it. He pours several drinks for Hiro to the praise and shouts of his brothers. Then, a moment of quiet prayer is allowed to pass as Noboru lights the incense. It doesn't last very long as Hachiro downs one of Hiro's shots and passes the other to Katsuo, who begrudgingly accepts.
Takeshi balks. "You– you can't drink those! You have to leave them for his spirit or something. What was the point?"
Akio's face falls, the very image of wise sage. "It is the intent that is important," he says, pressing his hands together and bowing.
Hachiro winks. "See? The monk says so. Hiro would want me to drink it."
The more they drink, the more stories that are shared about Hiro. Akio has few, but listens eagerly as Katsuo and Hachiro argue over the details of their escapades. From girls to nightclubs to gang fights along the New Orleans canals.
A police patrol calls out to us. Noboru fumbles with the whiskey and Akio looks ready to throw up. Hachiro puts on that easy charm of his, walking up to them with a swaggering gait.
The eldest Suzahara can make a friend out of anyone. You could drop him in the most hateful, racist, poor slum in South America and without knowing a lick of Spanish he'd have everyone sharing a drink and laughing in fifteen minutes.
He accomplishes that, minus the drinking, in only a minute with the pair of cops. Posture lax, expressions bright and at ease, one would think they and Hachiro have been old buddies for years now. As they leave, the brothers decide it's time to go. Raising one last drink to Hiro, they set off – the younger boys stumbling to the laughter of the elders. A troop of clowns, to be sure.
Later, Hachiro sends me a picture of Noboru sitting next to Rokurou, an arm thrown over his shoulder and each sporting some bruises, though the latter definitely has the worst of it. Katsuo sits next to them, smoking, and bleeding from his nose. Far in the background are the crowds of protesters and their flags.
The next morning, before I go to the meeting area, I venture into the heart of downtown. It's actually the most open space in the city, a garden filled plaza ringed with government buildings. The plants and trees are cropped low, so that even across the courtyard one can always see the red pillar in the center of it all. A nexus point. No one going anywhere in the city can hope to miss it. Even the trains passing at the edges can hold it in plain sight. If only for a moment.
The walk to reach it feels like a lifetime, until I'm standing far beneath a ten story tall red slat, marked with segments of black and orange. The hunk of metal is scarred and dented in some areas, never refurbished or restored to whatever condition it was in before. Cleaned and preserved, yes, but left in its half-decayed state, as a reminder of everything it'd gone through in its unremembered war. Commuters give it a wide berth, while visitors and tourists get right up close, needing to see it and touch it. Crowds of them, reaching out just to graze it with the tips of their fingers.
It sits on an obsidian block, where one can stand and see their own colorless reflection. At my height, cutting across my chest, reads – In memory of the Angel War and those who fought it in our place.
It's just one of the shoulder pylons, the one part of it they found somewhere out by the shore. I read in an article it housed these projectiles the size of a bus. The pylon itself is huge and gives me a glimpse of the hulking mass that must've been the Evas. I can almost see the head, right between two of these armored pillars, red plate bright in the shimmer of fire and summer sun. It's one thing to see pictures of it stalking through a city block, quite another to stand up to a physical piece of it. They were giants. Titans.
It's still hard to believe they were operated by people so small and unprepared for combat. What must it have been like, watching them battle each other? It leads me to wonder where the other pieces are. Why there's only this lonely sliver of it left.
"She used to be awful proud of being a pilot," dad had said, sitting on our back porch and looking over his winter garden. "That was all she had back then. It was who she was."
The sky is gray here, gripped in a cold that cuts deeper than any of the valley winds in Arizona. I reach out to touch the glass stone.
"Hey, mom."
I meet my contact at the docks in the southern industrial block, drenched in the smell of oil and dead fish. There are two others already waiting there when I step out on the long concrete loading platform; a man who's much younger than me, and a woman. She wears a red coat with a hood, long black hair tucked within. The man nods, but doesn't bow, or thankfully feel inclined to trade names. The woman stares out at the sea, visible only through a gap at the neck of the river where it bleeds out into the ocean.
Our "tour guide" as he joked on the site, waddles up from the lower docking platforms decked in a heavy coat and beanie. Through a scraggly-haired face he grins, but no one bows or shakes hands. We've already paid him half the fee – the rest he takes once we get there.
"Name's Henmei, if you cared to know," he says and motions for us to follow, then stops. "You're not any of those, uh, Trinity nuts are you? I don't carry them to Honshu. Jin'll boat you over if that's the case, but I'm keeping the money."
The three of us shake our heads and Henmei relaxes. "Good, then let's get on board the Nihon-Maru."
The ship with such a noble name is an old speed boat, maybe used for racing, but painted over to stand out far less. He steers us out of the bay and into the open sea. The spray of the water is chilling and I regret not bringing something with a hood. Several times we're stopped by military patrols, who are persuaded to look the other way. They seem to know Henmei well.
No one speaks under the buzz of the engine, not until we reach a tiny dock on the tip of Honshu at a place called Aomori. Here, he has a re-purposed military truck, the back draped over with green canvas. We board and I am reminded of people in a different era who were taken far out to the tundras in these transports to be shot. The back at least has a port so we can see Henmei. As we drive, he explains that most of Japan has been sealed off and abandoned for the past twenty-nine years, save for the parts of Kyushu not flooded or utilized as a UN naval port. There aren't really any settlements beyond Fukushima, except for Matsumoto, which is more of a construction colony anyway – a gathering place for all the corps hired out for rebuilding and scavenging. One might find pockets of refugees from Indonesia here and there too, squatting in old towns. The UN has been pretty lax with its gate-keeping policy, as evidenced by our relatively easy passage.
Ever so slowly, Japan has started to come back to life.
I always thought the islands outside of Hokkaido would be scorched, barren places. But it's beautiful here. Clouds of snow converge from the mountain tops, hiding them in their mist and giving the impression that we're crossing realms, the only barrier between which is an endless sprawl of trees frothed with ice.
Entire cities lie abandoned, buildings having fallen into disrepair, their decay aided by roving bands of returnees in the earlier days. All of it lies empty now, ghost towns, each one of them. The scenery changes as we take an old highway by the coast. Many of the island's shoreline prefectures were taken under water after Second Impact and it takes me a while to realize we're actually driving along the side of one of those mountains that looked to be floating in the sky, passing by the crooked remnants of a dozen cities. Out in the dark waters is the top of what must have been a temple, still plated in gold despite decades alone and untended.
The red coat woman shifts as we jar over a bump, gripping tight to something. In her lap is a bronze urn with maple leaves scattered across it.
"Bringing my grandad back home," she says, catching my stare. "It took a long time, but we finally made it over."
Her Japanese sounds subdued. A native unused to speaking it. I'm not sure what to say, but she speaks for both of us. I learn that her name is Kei. She was an orphan at four and raised by her grandfather until he died three years later. Then she was sent to live at a Tenshido Revelation Church in Glasgow. She was raised during what she calls the Puritan Revivalist movement, an attempt to pull up the last roots of Catholicism and, by extension, Tenshido Monotheists left over from the religious bludgeoning that had groups at each other like common street gangs after Scotland's Riot Act was repealed.
"So, I became one of the faithful," she says, glancing at the back of Henmei's head. He doesn't seem to hear us over the jostling of the truck.
"Do you still believe?" I ask.
She turns, looking at me sidelong. "How can I not? It was real. It happened."
"So you think there's some spirit called Lilith still hanging around?"
At my smirk, her smile grows a bit. She sets the urn in a bag between her feet, wearing nothing but stockings and a long black skirt, of all things. "In Tenshido, Lilith isn't a person so much as she is a light of the soul. What makes us... us, I suppose." in her lap now is a sketch pad, where she draws circles within circles, three of them forming a triangular formation. "We, people, are Lilith, broken apart in fields of light. It's not so different from the stars in the sky, really."
"I've never heard it that way before," I say, watching her wrap the symbol within the core of an apple.
"That's because most people need something literal." around the apple, a snake eats its own tail while seven disembodied eyes watch. "They need something tangible to hear them and guide them."
"So have people and Lilith always been connected and we just never knew?"
Even with the rumbling of the truck, her touch is sharp, wrist moving with the jumps and turns more than trying to control them. "You could say that. No one understood what her light was until the war. Until the world-eater gave us the choice."
"The world-eater?"
"The Eva. Unit-one."
One of the orbs in her sketch, cut with slits that might be eyes, has a maw of square teeth ever so slightly parted. As though it's on the edge of a grin.
"I'm not sure I can believe all that."
Some of her black hair falls, swinging to touch the paper. "You don't have to."
Her pencil scratches on the final touches, hand stowing her stray locks away. She tears the page off and hands the little diagram to me. A small arrow points to one of the circles just beyond the radius of the bigger three: a little black shadow.
Next to it reads – This one is Kazuya, the Stubborn Traveler.
Smirking, I look back to find her set into the paper again, trying to hide one of her own. We sit together in the quiet carried by the breeze, fading as the world molds from a serene, white covered landscape to dark green forests and alpine meadows.
The boy, Chikuma, likes to play the harmonica. Sad melodies that remind me of home. He tells us he's from Colorado, only speaking when prompted. He is shy, I can sense, catching the patient smiles that flicker here and there.
"So, why did you come?" Kei asks. She's focused on me now, innocently intent. Her coat is just a little too big for her and I wonder how old she is. Surely too young and pretty for me.
"It's really not so important."
Kei quirks her head with that knowing, patient look. My lips work a smile and I shake my head. She leans in, egging me on.
"My parents were in the Angel War," I say, trying to gauge her reaction. "They were pilots."
Her brown eyes twinkle and, half in jest, she appears to give my answer deep consideration. "There weren't that many of them active, were there?"
Again, my lips twitch. "No, so then I guess they would be the pilots."
She crosses her legs and bounces a knee. "You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little skeptical."
"You don't have to believe me," I say, finally lending her that cunning smile she gave me earlier. Kei bites her lower lip to stifle a giggle, sliding her hair back. She looks away, out to the highway. A flock of cranes flies over the water.
"My grandad used to tell me stories," she says after they become distant. "He lived on the outskirts of Gotenba in one of the mountain temples."
"There was one battle, before Tokyo-three was destroyed by the other Angels. He said the Eva nearly landed on his house, so close he could feel the heat from its armor and the arms of the Angel. They were made of energy, or light. They cut through buildings like butter and the Eva grasped them to keep it at bay, wrestling the giant. My grandfather said he could see the Eva's skin ooze and bubble. It threw the Angel down the mountain and, with nothing but a small blade, cut through its heart. For a while there was the imprint of a giant left in the mountain side. He said nothing really grew there after that."
When she looks back and softens, I realize I've been staring. Watching the sway of her hair and the way her hands move through them. How dark but bright her eyes are all at once. I look elsewhere.
"Which ones?"
The question startles me and I turn back. Her heels click against one another.
"Which ones did your mother and father pilot?" Kei asks.
"Unit-two was my mother's. Unit-one was my father's."
Examining her shoes, boots with loose strings, she nods, but says nothing more. We pass forests of thousand year old cedars. Overgrown societies of Sakhalin spruces, Sakhalin firs, blue firs, and Yezo spruces mixed with broadleaved birches, oaks, and maples. Beneath them is a dense undergrowth of mosses and lichens. Kei points out a deer watching us.
It's not until we rove through old Tokyo that my visions of scorched earth become real. There are little hand crafted monuments all along the outskirts of the road as we pass into what the orthodoxy brands holy ground, left by other pilgrims who've made the journey. Mostly wicker figurines and crosses of varying size. A crooked graveyard that goes on for miles as far as I can see.
Henmei stops and we climb out, joints aching. A light drizzle starts to come down, tickling my neck and dashing the water with ripples along the beach, just down the hill from where we are. Further off, I can see shadows protruding from the waves. Not buildings. In fact, they look more like crosses.
"What are those?"
Henmei, hanging out of the driver side door with his pistol, shrugs. "No one's really sure. Bigwigs say they're just dead Evas. Shin Seiki say they're the remains of an old god, or some shit like that."
"What happened?"
"It was the last battle of the war, I think."
Kei latches onto her right arm. "The Red Sacrament," she says, her gaze speaking volumes greater.
The hush of the waves is much louder here, like in Panama. There are wooden posts, maybe the remains of homes or a dock, jutting along the beach. They trickle up the hill, where I can see the imprint of tank treads left in the dirt.
My mother was here. There was a battle she fought and lost in this place. Once, she had faced monsters here too. They both had. Maybe not in this exact spot, but as close as I'll ever get. Turning, I find Kei waiting for me.
"Where do I go?" I ask Henmei. He points to the hill, where Chikuma has already started up into the mists crawling over the rocks, the singing of his harmonica leaving a trail for us to follow. It isn't steep, but the walk from the road is long. Henmei says we can't go through the cities to see it.
"Too many falling buildings. That and the squatters. Sometimes you find more than just rabid packs of dogs."
So he drove us out to this barren mountain side. With each step gravity becomes harsher and the air comes in thinner. Chikuma's playing gets louder, until we crest the top, finding him sitting on a boulder playing out his harmonies.
Here, the earth stops, opening up to a black, drowning maw so large the other side is hidden on its own horizon as the rim arcs out. It's like we've walked to the edge of the world, so vast and consuming my eyes sting just trying to take it all in. Vertigo hits next and no amount of blinking clears the colorless splotches away. I fall more than sit down, tingling senses needing to feel hard ground beneath me, else I might tumble in. Particles drift through the weak beams of light trying to penetrate the shadow.
I understand. To some degree. I finally see the gaping void my father has been struggling to climb out of since the war ended. It howls, echoing with an emptiness that can never be filled. It ate everything and everyone whole, swallowed up my mother so she was almost never seen again. This is as deep and terrible as any scar on her arm.
This is eternal, unmistakable proof of their struggle here.
Something warm glides down to touch my lips.
Kei wraps her arms around me from behind and starts to sing. I don't know the song, but the words tell a story about a girl who carries a baby over a mountain dawn to dusk at the behest of a noble lord, wishing for the day she can finally go home.
When my tears stop, and her song has run its course, she kneels beside me, urn in hand. She twists the top off and stares into the blackness. The weight on her thoughts is darker than any pit. Heavier than any ocean. A foreigner like me on an island far away.
Lifting her head, Kei tosses the ashes free.
They float away into the dark below and she hugs the urn as we watch. Long enough for the clouds to sweep the sun away and darken with rain. Long enough for it to reach us as flecks of snow, a damp kind of cold that soaks the earth and never dries out. The kind that freezes your hands and feet off.
Kei doesn't move as I stand, still gazing into this abyss created by war.
When I hold out my hand to her, she contemplates it as though it is some otherwordly object, attached to a strange, alien thing with a human likeness. When our eyes meet, she seems to make a decision. With unsure fingers, she takes my hand.
Chikuma, our quiet witness, leads us back down.
"I come every year to play songs for my mother," he says. Without him I'm sure me and Kei would've been lost on this mountain side. She stares at the ground as we walk.
"My father died when I was eleven," he continues, never once looking back. "Two years later, mom came all the way out here to the crater and threw herself in. I wonder how long it took her to reach the bottom?"
Neither of us has an answer and he doesn't expect one.
"She used to like it when I played."
Kei, fixing to the slim red arc creeping through the gray-blue sky as she looks up, nods. "I'm sure part of her still does."
Henmei is leaning against the rear of his truck, patiently awaiting our return. The engine gurgles as we board and before we leave, Kei hesitates, setting her grandfather's urn down by the side of the road. I help her in when she runs back. Chikuma falls asleep on the return trip, while me and Kei watch a crater called Tokyo-3 disappear on the horizon.
As we come in range of Fukushima and civilization, my phone starts to chirp with delayed messages and missed calls. Most are from my father.
I dial and he picks up before the first ring.
"Kazuya?"
"Dad? What's wrong?"
"You need to come home. It's your mother."
