Street Sweeping Chapter – Part I
Shifting and churning in a vague stream of consciousness, in what at one moment feels like a downward spiral and the next a violent push up a harsh incline, Kanbei Maebara walks the road straight to hell where he well and truly belongs.
Finally, you're on my side of the mirror.
Barreling off into the distance before slowing to a crawl. Ascending, descending, floating about like a cell in the bloodstream, like an atom shooting off through space, like the head of a compass spinning out of control. His furtive sense of self drifts through that eternal darkness.
If only I could keep you here.
A pillar of light pierces that darkness. A burning. A total and complete sense of burning. Hot. So hot. A hundred degrees and climbing. An ant. A magnifying glass. Then nothing. The void goes on.
No, there was something there. Something that wasn't before.
Something grasps at him. He is shapeless, and that presence reaches out for something that has no form. But all the same it grabs hold of him. It was a touch of violation, that intended to break through and invade, a touch that longed to dig deeper and deeper in. But that touch itself is transient. A memory, a hazy memory of an anxious feeling. And before too long it disappears into the swirling abyss.
Anxiety is regret, anxiety is concern, anxiety is helplessness. But now even that exists only in memory – a fleeting thing he could no longer hold onto for long. Such was the nature of the dead.
Let me tell you, it's really not quite THAT depressing. Things are a lot quieter on this side.
He sees the inside of his uncle's apartment. The high rise, the one from when he was a teenager. He sees him there, eyes weary and darkened. For a moment he thinks, his aunt should be in the kitchen. That's where she always was – what prided her the most. But that scene too begins to drift away.
A shadow looms over. A massive shadow. In the distance glowing green irises. They're the wrong color but he knows – they're hers. And her shadow towers over everything, like a giant.
A dark hand reaches out – it envelops him. A moment of terror. A voiceless scream, an empty cry for help. And just like that it's gone away too.
Each scene is a mere glimpse. And each scene elicits the memory of an emotion that sheers the aimless course of his consciousness, setting the trajectory for all but a moment before it slips away as well.
The bedroom. It wasn't his, but he slept in it plenty. Sayaka is in bed – on one side, the child, sleeping away peacefully. On the other, the heiress to the Sonozaki name, her white dress in tatters. She sets her hat down on the floor. Her hair turns green. The sheets beneath her begin to run red. Her head in her hands, she murmurs to herself. He can't hear her. And then it's all gone in a salty mist.
Ahh, making your way back to the moment it all went wrong?
Let me tell you something.
You're looking in the wrong place.
You came into this story at the very end.
At no point were you ever its lead.
A rush of water. A spitting of foam, the sound of seagulls in the distance. Was that Okinawa? It had to be. That was the only time -
That's right. He sees it then. His uncle in that dark room. Mamoru Akasaka is holding the gun. The trigger tightens. A bullet sails across that endlessly infinite stretch of time in slow motion.
Yes, I quite wondered how you came to have that scar. But you knew, all along.
Contradictions upon contradictions. Idea that make no sense, excuses, pretenses for them, all converging on a single point, creating an image of the faintest memory of them all.
Go on. Reach out for it. See what you find.
A calm body of water. An ocean's worth of it. Floating. Water resistance. A warm haze of light from above. What lies out in the distance is an old shack submerged deep within. An old shack ripped out of its place in time, held up by old rusted away iron slabs for walls.
No, that wasn't just a shack.
Two hazy figures. No, three, one much smaller. The forms twist and churn in the dark. The door to the shack opens. A radiant light emerges. A soft sound – a spoken name. A loved and cherished notion. Years and years of raw affection poured out in a single sound. A sound of relief, a culmination of warped feelings finally washed away.
But the shack descends into the darkness below, and the light fades away along with it, slowly but surely until even the sound was lost, and all that remains is a small pocket of air that fizzles away.
What was the name you heard?
Go on.
Say it.
Desperation. Oh god. Please god. God help, please help. Begging. Pleading.
There's no God here today. Just me.
God don't I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.
Hey now, there's no need for any of that. If you need to pray to a higher power that badly, let me show you a new one.
The slow drifting gives way to a rapid descent. This path is guided by more than just hazy emotions, like a rollercoaster taking its first dip on a predestined track. And while that despair still lingers, the descent continues, faster and faster. Despair is a powerful thing – and as such it fades away not as a whisper in the wind, but as a burning comet.
That blazing capsule of despair crosses another horizon, unimpeded by the searing water pressure. Deep down, far past the depths that the living would dare venture, obscured by the watery haze that the light just barely touches is a monolith a hundred thousand times its size, at last revealed just off the edge of the ocean floor.
An apocalyptic, humanoid thing, pure white, sprawled out across a rusted iron slab coated in barnacles and waste, built up over countless centuries. Five fingers on each hand, but toe-less, webbed feet. Faceless, but with long flowing dark blue hair floating there in the dark in a massive wave that could crush all in its wake. Protruding from between its legs is a massive dozen-mile-long cord of thick keratin extending outward and wrapping around both the slab and the body, bits and pieces eaten away by the water exposing a red fleshy substance within.
To merely bask in is presence elicits the same alarm as an empty amphitheater. To walk upon its pale, flawless surface is to crawl like an ant. To liken man to an insect. And so to gaze upon it is to take man's greatest contradiction and give it form.
Now go ahead. Plead for her mercy all you like, but she won't wake.
The shack is a memory. The name, too, is just a memory. There's nothing left of either but that memory now. In all senses they had been washed away by time. They were both gone, forever, leaving behind nothing more than mere speculation for the transitory dead.
And this thing – this unspeakable horror, this too is only a memory. Something left behind for only the dead to witness as they pass on through.
But maybe it wasn't a contradiction. Maybe this bound goddess was the only truth there was. The only truth there needed to be.
That's right. Most things only live on in memory. And the moment someone fails to pass it down, it ceases to be.
Hold your courts all you like, but memory is the only true authority there is.
But maybe that's how it should be.
Yes, let's just leave all of this behind. You can't reach the outer world now. There's no reason to reconcile this one with it anymore. Hand everything over and embrace that simple oblivion.
That feels right. That's what he should do. He doesn't need context anymore. How he saw himself, how that contradicted with how he really was. In this world he could part with the outer world remembering it just the way he wanted.
But was that really how it should be?
A low bell tolls, giving that thought both context and form.
The drowned god's eyes that don't exist open. He feels them open. The world around him quakes.
But of course – that's why there's a history at all. Even if yours is just that crusty old scrapbook.
A form off in the distance. Something familiar – another emotion crawling to the surface, or another memory?
His hand that doesn't exist reaches out. He can feel it. He reaches for the gavel that was his very reason. It's not confidence, or desire – it's an instinct. Maybe he wants it, maybe he doesn't. But the sweet temptation beckons and his hands wrap around it.
Mankind won't surrender to anything. Not even to its own memory.
And you – you're no different, are you? No, perhaps you're the very worst, of them all.
In his hands, the gavel becomes the hilt of a sword. The blade is unseen, its true form unclear, but it's there all the same.
But it doesn't matter.
If you want to keep fighting until everything makes sense, go right ahead. You'll only turn that sword on yourself at the end.
Let the contradictions mount.
You can't keep me out forever.
Something that had been there disappears into the watery depths. And before too long, as though drifting through the water to the surface, he ascends. Up and up, the water struggling to keep its hold on him – and just like that, his form returns. His body lurches. The invasive force from the very beginning starts to clarify itself as a lumpy snake, worming its way through to his colon.
His throat seizes up as a clump of blood and bile tries to force its way out. Slowly the lump retracts itself, one violent thrashing of his body at a time. The further it retreats, the stronger his body convulses – until the moment it pulls out completely and he falls completely limp as though his strings had been cut. Vaguely he feels the urge to throw up – and then he does. Relief. There's another familiar thing. Even if just for a few moments. He feels the wetness of his own vomit against his neck. But he's at peace.
Shapes dance across the uncertain haze of light, shimmering faintly in that endless black. The light betrays a small shadow looming directly over him.
And then a sound. "Lie still. I'm not done yet."
The vague uncertainty was beginning to sharpen, slowly but steadily, as the brain begins to check in on the rest of the body – and the sudden, immediate consequences that came with it. All over his senses were begging for mercy. Foreign bodies invading his skin, wrapping around his innards like snakes. Things missing that shouldn't have been, things exposed that couldn't possibly have been, the open air irritating tissue that never should have been exposed to the outside. The pain was unlike anything – not even the unspeakable pain that was still so fresh in his mind. His torso violently shakes as the feeling wraps around the base of his spine and ascends.
It's all wrong. Everything is so terribly wrong. This wasn't right. Something had pulled him back through – where he was before. That was where he should've been. There's no way – it felt wrong in every way it possibly could.
And then finally his voice returns. He lets out a sharp cry, foaming at the mouth as the mass intruding upon his flesh writhes about. His left leg kicks into the air on its own as a small seizure unravels what little is left of his consciousness.
"Sorry, but the worst isn't past just yet."
As quickly as it had come back, he finds himself unable to breathe again – but as the seconds drone on and his body struggles to regain control, his vision cuts out as though a plug had been pulled, and a moment later he shoots upward, sending some of the instruments on the cot he was lying on flying. And in the next moment, he loses all feeling in his back, and he sinks back into it, unable to sit up again.
"What did you do to me?" He moves his mouth. His lips are torn up, but he speaks. Somehow, it's still his voice.
"I saved you."
He looks down at his lower body – bits of flesh were still missing, but by and large the massive gash that had been there not long before was sealed away, covered in two large metal plates and bloodied bandages and septic that wrapped around his lower body.
But the rest of it, naturally, is gone. Where his leg one was is now some kind of prosthetic made of iron, and naturally, the more relevant parts of his pelvis were also gone for good.
"Try not to freak out too much. You can still piss – it'll be bloody for awhile though, and we've gotta replace the bag I taped under there every day or two, or it'll fill up. Your ass was in pretty good shape so you don't have much to worry about there. And you can't take those plates off, ever, unless you feel like checking out your small intestine. At least not for a year or two until those wounds seal up."
His brain is in such a state witnessing his broken lower half that he should have gone into shock just like that – but the rest of his body doesn't comply. Not even his face, perpetually stuck in place above his upper lip, as though being worn like a mask. The initial panic had come and gone, and now it's as it was only moments before, with him lying there a transient thing that could hardly be considered alive. But the difference now is fairly simple – the void would not take him again.
"I shouldn't still be here."
"Nope, but you don't get much say in the matter this time around."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Come on now. You were only half this perplexed back in the courthouse."
He finally looks over at her. Sure enough, it's her – the old woman that he'd seen that night in the courthouse. The one that had delivered the report signed by Akasaka that had gotten Mion Sonozaki the guilty verdict.
"Who are you?"
"Rika Furude. Satoko has to have at least said my name before, right?"
"You're supposed to be dead."
"So are you. Yet here we are." At the very least it explained her appearance, and the voice that didn't match. "The memorial they had for you was pretty nice, actually. I heard Akasaka cried." She added. Rika Furude was supposed to have died from complications related to progeria syndrome over ten years ago. And yet, to her point, here she was.
"You're not going to be able to move for a good long while. And you're going to have to figure a lot of things out from scratch. Yours isn't a normal nervous system anymore."
"I need to find my uncle."
"That's not going to happen. Satoshi isn't going to help you now."
"Bullshit."
"It's the truth. You're not quite a sacrificial pawn, but you ended up here in the pile all the same."
"There's no way."
"Deny it all you want, but the deal was made. You were lied to, boy."
"That's rich, coming from a dead woman."
"You can't waste these next months pining for an old man that got you in this mess to begin with. You need to focus on your recovery."
"Months?! There's no way in hell, I'm gonna be stuck like this, for -" In that exact moment, some feeling returns to his cheeks, but he spits up blood all over himself. Rika wipes away what had pooled on his face with a towel like she was treating an infant.
"I need you to listen to me, now. Satoshi made a deal. He gave you to the Sonozaki family in exchange for Ono District."
"Bullshit."
"You don't even know what day it is. It's mid July right now, but the election's already over – he's got all the backing that he needs, so December is as good as his. So, once we have a new governor, they're going to pin it on the old one. That way the chairmen from the other departments will have no choice but to keep their mouths shut and listen to what they're told. You get what's going on, right?"
"That's ridiculous. The most obvious plant in the world. My uncle… He's smarter than that."
"It works out a lot better for him if he isn't. The way things are now, he's primed the masses to protest his enemies and the simplest push will be his best option."
"That just means he hasn't found me yet."
"Don't be a fool. You think that Sonozaki girl could parade you down our biggest road all the way to my side of town with your leg chopped off and he wouldn't have known ten minutes later?"
"If you keep slighting my uncle like this, you'll regret it."
"Yeah, I bet. But good luck figuring out how to strangle me with your index finger before the fall harvest." She sighs. "Think about it. Oishi left you high and dry. He said he'd wait. Sure you can pretend he was going off to get help. But it's been a month. He knows exactly what happened. He knows where you are. He even had every opportunity to retrieve your body before I showed up. Nothing that you're saying makes any sense and you know it."
"How the hell do you know about -"
"Oishi's a real old face around here. He's been fucking us right in the ass since the seventies. How did I know he came here with you? It's kind of obvious, isn't it? He walked right up to Kimiyoshi's house and stayed over for some tea."
He knew Oishi was a shady old man, but this was just something else entirely. The more she said, the more what he was thinking conflicted with what he knew. But he couldn't really deny any of it either.
He thinks on that afternoon they all spent at that casino parlor. His uncle and those two detectives, like they'd been best friends for years.
"You're just making this up as you go along. Watching for my reactions and saying what you need to."
"You know as well as I do. He killed your witness, dropped you off for Sonozaki to do whatever the hell she wanted with – and left you both in that pit. And the only reason why you're here, and not that one – well, that's got to be your biggest question, the one you still don't have an answer for, doesn't it?"
He has no response for that.
"Funnily enough, the answer there hinges on a deal made behind your back, too. One I made with your mom. Back when you were still just kicking and screaming."
His chest tightens. "What did you just say?"
"Your mom and I go way back. Tried to kill each other a couple of times, but we sorted things out by the end."
"That's a likely story."
"You don't know the first thing about her. How would you have an idea if that's a lie or not?"
Again, he's left in silence.
"Whether you believe me or not isn't really my concern. I happen to be the only reason why you're still alive – and the only one that knows how to maintain this whole cyborg ninja thing you've got going on now. But, it sounds like you don't even know what that really means to you."
"You might as well just kill me now."
"I'm not doing that."
"Why not?!"
"Like I said – I've got use for you."
"Whatever you think you're gonna get out of this mess, it's not happening."
"Losing your normal life isn't the end."
"Is that what I had before? A normal life?"
"That's goddamn right. And the more you whine about how things used to be, the dumber you'll see yourself when you're going through what we've got ahead of us."
"That was… That was the end. There shouldn't be anything more ahead."
"Look, there's only so much optimistic shit I can force out of my mouth. If you're going to lie there and tell me that your will broke after dying just once, it didn't mean much to you in the first place." She turns away from him. "Here's the deal. You either go out on your own terms now, or we do things my way. If we go with my way, there won't be any time or place for this bullshit. But I wonder if you actually have the guts to end this on your own."
With that she leaves. On the far end of the cavern is a door – she opens it, fumbling with the lock on it with some issue, and exits through it.
And with that, time starts to pass.
No, this wasn't worth it.
This was it.
He could end it here.
At fifteen hours, his bladder expires into the plastic bag for the first time. It hurts like hell. No. There was no way. It felt all wrong, so very very wrong. He wasn't going to continue like this for however long the iron cast kept together.
At twenty-four hours, his face decompresses. He can blink, move his upper lip – he can even bite down on his tongue. But try as he might he just wasn't strong enough to even draw blood.
Rika returns through the doorway. Wordlessly she swaps out the plastic bag for another one, and then leaves.
He just had to wait.
And wait he did.
August 2nd, 2016.
Gifu Prefecture's sitting governor Hamura meets with the Assembly to discuss the possibility of adopting newer voting options for the upcoming election. With the disappearance of Kanbei Maebara in June, the number of abductions have been on the rise. Parents are encouraged to keep their children at home. Many receive home schooling. The school district offers online class options for all students under the age of twelve. Under Satoshi's Department of Welfare the landscape of the school environment had already become so different – and as the chaos sets in, the adults scramble to absolve themselves in this age of accountability, while Satoshi rallies them all in one direction – against the red tape holding him at bay.
The bag gets heavier. He can smell the ammonia. Rika replaces it. The bag gets lighter. She leaves. He should be hungry. Why isn't he hungry? He wants his aunt's cooking. The first he's thought of her in four years. He can move his right wrist.
September 4th, 2016.
Kanbei Maebara is officially declared deceased. Satoshi scorns the legal system for pronouncing him dead without a body. He preaches injustice for the young, and the people latch onto it with all their might. Across the prefecture parents of dead and missing children burn straw dolls of Mion Sonozaki. Violence breaks out in Ono District. The protesters are slaughtered. Five arrests are made, ten bodies are buried. One of the deceased is a Cabinet member's daughter. With the Minister of Justice's eyes on the scene, Governor Hamura has no choice but to create a task force to address the civil unrest. The Department of Welfare is granted a seven hundred million yen budget and direct authority over every police station in the prefecture tasked with monitoring school districts to address the security concerns across the prefecture. Eighty percent of that is funneled into Satoshi's own campaign.
He can bend his right arm at the elbow. He feebly grabs his own neck with one arm. His bladder empties again. He tracks the days with streaks on the wall from his own discharge, days defined by Rika's arrival to change his bag. He sheds a tear.
October 15th, 2016.
The abductions continue. Accused pedophiles and child traffickers are found dead every day. Governor Hamura's campaigning has all but stopped. The money continues to flow, but the problem continues. And he is the only one that at the end of the day will be accountable. In a desperate move he accuses the Department of Welfare of embezzling funds. His representatives that visit the office in Hida City are strung up from a traffic light for twelve hours by Satoshi's supporters. One news anchor runs a story on the incident and is found dead in his car the next morning. No one cares what the right thing to do is anymore. Everyone just wants to be safe. Everyone wants their normalcy. They'll vote for whoever promises that the hardest.
Two arms. He triumphantly stops his own breathing for periods of about thirty seconds at a time. Rika sometimes shows up to preserve the muscle in his left leg.
November 10th, 2016.
Welfare services across the prefecture are given emergency powers to act on reports of abuse with greater authority than the police. The decision stirs controversy, but Governor Hamura lacks the authority to overturn any of it. The Minister of Justice works directly with the Department of Welfare and law enforcement after a botched report that Governor Hamura had left to his closest internal supporters. Within the first thirteen days twenty abducted children are recovered. For some it's already too late, but for many lives have been saved.
His shoulders come online. He tries to shuffle himself off the cot, but a lump of fat that has formed directly underneath him deters all efforts.
December 30th, 2016.
Election Day has come and gone. Satoshi Houjou becomes governor of Gifu Prefecture in a landslide. That day, the bones of a dismembered leg are dug up by Governor Hamura's residence. The leg is confirmed to have belonged to Kanbei Maebara. Satoshi weeps before the nation, and the following morning Governor Hamura is found dead. The emergency powers granted to the Department of Welfare are fully instated as Satoshi works with the Minister of Justice to wipe out every gray area in his prefecture where abuse might exist. The concept of consent is reevaluated at the local law enforcement level. Social workers that fail to make the full use of that authority or waste their time with false positives are fired with impunity. Teachers that fail to report are suspended. The families of abusers are stripped of their dignity and fined anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of their annual income. Objections are made with higher courts that are firmly squashed under the weight of the yearly stipend Satoshi promises both the Minster of Justice and Education. Attempts on Governor Houjou's life are replied with Chief of Police Oishi Kuraudo's swift and merciless in turn, hundreds of rich families have their reputations shattered, their children once well on their way to lofty futures holed up in juvenile detention as their victims attain revenge. Repeated offenders and underage rapists are tried in higher court as adults. Many don't see the light of day until they're in their forties with no prospects in the legal economy. Power is given to children across the prefecture that at one time had no hope. Normalcy.
He can bend at the waist. He yanks on the metal plates as hard as he can. And at last he can feel it. A searing pain, unlike any other – all he has to do is keep it up, and he's sure it'll finally end. Rika visits him yet again.
Today she speaks. "Satoshi won the other day."
He stops. He falls backward. By now he understands the passage of time. He knows she wasn't lying.
He grits his teeth.
He wanted to be there.
He wanted to see it.
No. It's not just a memory anymore. It's not just a far off dream. It's something that came and passed. And he wasn't there. It was a waste. It was all a waste.
He sits up.
"Tell me what it is you want." His first words in almost half a year.
Her mouth twists into a wicked grin. "It's simple. I want you to become the Furude clan's shinobi. And in return, I'll restore the dignity you've lost, and reveal the truth of your family name."
The ridiculousness of that statement comes and goes. "To what end?" Is his only reply.
"So we can create a miracle. Right here, in this god-forsaken Hinamizawa."
"Hinamizawa?"
She laughs. "Oh, this should be fun." She stretches our her hand. "This is our contract. Should be easy enough to sign, even in your shape."
"Whatever your plans are, the Sonozaki family is mine."
"You've got a deal."
He pauses for just a moment. The image of that girl appears in his head. And then he takes her bony hand.
"I guess that's it then, Kanbei Furude. You and I, the very last two on this earth."