Ch.5: Halloween Village
It snowed the day he arrived on Hokkaido.
He'd been putting that thought out of his mind for the past week. It was only August - surely the winter wouldn't come that fast? But it had; while he swam, the flakes drifted down like lonely little clowns, dancing their way into the water, where they melted instantly. For one entire minute, he stopped and treaded water in the middle of the ocean, watching as the snow spiraled down from above. There was no time. He shouldn't have been surprised, of course - the weather had been turning steadily colder the week before, but certainly he hadn't been expecting snow until December. He'd circled a little corner of the large bulk of Hokkaido, looking for some quaint little fishing village he might live by so that he might get help when he most desperately needed it.
Not that he'd ever need help. He was alone now, and he liked that. He didn't need anyone bossing him around or anything anymore. He was independent now - he'd NEVER need someone else anymore, he'd survive all on his own, detached where no one could touch him.
In spite of the drastic change in weather, he swam at noon everyday, taking the afternoon to dry his blanket and his now-thoroughly shrunken clothes. Once, he'd been careless enough to sleep out in the open - the next morning the blanket and his clothes shone a crackling silver from the frost that had accumulated over the course of the night. He didn't make that mistake again; even as tired as he was after his swimming, he'd pull himself into a cave or some other semblance of shelter before hobbling around for dry wood to light a fire to. Similarly, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find any dry tinder to light at all. Every night without fail, he would huddle under the still-damp blanket, staring into the flames as he wished for food. Sometimes he could catch some. Other times he wasn't so lucky.
It was getting so cold that he couldn't get up before nine without being frozen into an icicle. The temperature outside of his hovel of warmth inside of his blanket was scarcely warmer than the water, in which he swam in every day for the past two weeks. Now that he'd found a seaside village to park his winter camp by, he'd gone up on shore, still admiring the way those downy chips of ice turned lazily in midair.
He WAS a bit afraid now, he grudgingly admitted to himself. But he wouldn't ever tell that to anyone else, ever. There was no one to tell it to anyway.
The first night he spent on Hokkaido was spent in the forest. The village he'd seen was only a little ways from his makeshift camp, but he didn't want to rely on it for materials or anything. He lit a fire and collected enough brush to last one night and then laid out his clothes and his blanket to dry. He was glad that there was a little rock outcropping to hide him from the wind - but even more than that, he was surprised when night fell completely and no one from the village came to check out the smoke from the fire he'd made. Taking heart in the fact that possibly the villagers had heard of a certain mad juvenile delinquent on the loose, he resolved to pack up everything the next day and move to another place, away from human habitation. However, his gloating mood dissolved when he awoke the next day to somber skies and more fat flakes billowing down. Leaving the fire unattended (he knew that it wouldn't burn down the forest or anything - everything was too soaked), he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and head, he walked out into the world.
Being from Tokyo, he'd seen snow in the streets, snow in movies, but never had he seen snow, THIS much snow, in a natural setting. He understood, just a little bit, why those crazy drunk poets from bygone ages wrote countless poems on the shape of trees and contrast of sunshine on glittering snow. These were large hexagonal chips of - something like icing he'd seen on a cake a long time ago - falling so silently and so effortlessly graceful, arraying his surroundings in a new white fur coat. He'd left his shoes on that first island he'd left, so the moment his toes found the ground covered with frost his entire body had started to shiver. But for the moment, all he could really see was the blanket, this NEW fashion of the world, watching him as he watched it. A sudden chill rippled through him, not from the cold.
"The world IS beautiful", he sucked in the cold air through his nose suddenly and felt his brain freeze up, sending sparks in front of his eyes. It was, after all - he almost felt like a child again, running through the streets, tumbling into drifts and sliding on the unseen panes of glass that coated the sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. But he wasn't there in the place of his memories, was he? He returned to reality, he was a juvenile delinquent running from the law to make some other life for himself. Was it possible to be surrounded by so much and be alone at the same time?
He knew why the Round Square wanted him to come here now, to isolate him in this place of silent watchfulness, as if all of Nature were watching him to see what move he would make first. In all the times before, he'd had someone he could blame, someone he could hurt physically. But how could a person hurt Nature? They could burn trees - but those grew back. They could kill the fish - but new ones would take their places. Nature was invincible - a person couldn't punch Nature and couldn't hurt Nature until every bone broke in their bodies and they were screaming with pain. Kaga knew, as well as any other person, that he couldn't fight the cold, couldn't cheat the hunger. He couldn't punch snowflakes. Whatever he did, he couldn't even make a dent in Nature because it would just regenerate, grow back over those old scars.
Here, he was tiny and insignificant, part of a larger circle that he couldn't control. This wasn't Tokyo, in this place there was no one to fear him and his angry fists, in this place there was no one to bully and toss around. There was no one to make him feel better here - there was no one here at all.
Suddenly he had to see another human being. For one bizarre moment, he wanted to shout for someone to listen to him, to pay attention to him - someone he could touch, someone who could feel pain, that pain inside of him. Faster and faster his feet flew, taking him into the midst of that town, desperation telling him to see someone, anyone. His breath came out in clouded gasps, puffing in front of him like ghosts - for indeed, the town was dead.
He entered the main square, silent except for the noiseless falling of snow. Squinting, he could almost pretend to himself that there were lights in the windows of the shops, imagine silhouettes against glass-paned windows, see the merriment of some Ainu festival or another. But no people were in the houses, not traversing the streets, not crowding the abandoned train station with its rusty red tracks. Against the glare of the newly fallen snow the windows peered like dark, hollowed-out eyes. Turning in a full circle around, he realized that he hadn't seen the desolation before, he hadn't paid attention to the half-hinged doors, the caved in roofs, the broken glass windows that hadn't been repaired. There was no other human soul here in sight, at least none visible. He shivered at the thought that ghosts might be inhabiting the place.
He chided his chattering nerves - he'd never been afraid of the preternatural before, never believed in anything supernatural before - it wasn't the time to start. And yet, he wasn't able to suppress that sudden fear of anything that moved. But there was much to fear if he was afraid of everything that moved, wasn't there? The snow drifted around him, the wind blowing against his ear - he felt everything so keenly now, the coldness of his toes and the frozen marrow of his bones. He HAD to find someone.
The panic set in suddenly, and he dashed to the front door of what used to be an inn. Knocking hard and receiving no answer to his pleas, he broke open the door and half-sobbing, ran up the stairs. He felt as if something was watching him, that sensation stronger than ever, as if the ghosts were following him, haunting his ever step - he didn't want to be there! He wanted to be back in Tokyo - even if he had to pay his jail sentence - even if he had to apologize to that Kimihiro - even if he had to be a slave for the rest of his life. He knew now that there was no one there, no proprietress and no owner, he was alone and completely cowed and insignificant - he'd never felt so small before -
- except, except . . .when his father beat him.
He knocked into a random door, suddenly, a small room that probably, in the prime of the inn's existence, would have cost a pretty penny because it looked out just over the town. The view from the window as especially pretty today because the snow had just newly fallen. Perhaps a strange sight because there were still red-and-yellow leaves on the trees because autumn hadn't completely passed yet and there was already snow on it. But his gaze wasn't on the pretty view - it was on just what was underneath the windowsill, facing him.
He had found his other human. The only problem was that the person had obviously been dead for some time now. The corpse at some point had been maggot-ridden, and beside it were those insects who had died when the corpse rotted. The clothes were still in pristine condition - a perfect preservation of the clothes of the 1980s - and the empty sockets where Asian almond eyes should have been stared up at Kaga as if in wonder that someone had finally come to visit him after all these years. One hand was stretched to hold the knees to the chest, the other was stretching out on the floor, splinters growing between the fingernail and the shriveled skin. It seemed to him that the corpse was reaching out to him. Then all at once, it reached up and grabbed his wrist where his arm hung at his side. The dank, scratchy skin horrified him.
Very uncharacteristically, he screamed. Wrenching his hand from the skeleton, he turned and ran, all the time feeling those empty black holes boring into his back, watching, always watching. He ran all the way back to the cave where the fire still burned merrily, where he huddled underneath the blanket and felt cold, clammy hands find their way around his neck and slowly strangle him underwater. He could hear them, of course, now that he'd seen the corpse - he could hear the voices of those lovely ghosts who he'd disturbed. And it made him very lonely that he was the only living thing among a world of dead.
And that was the way that the people found him, a day later, curled up in a fetal position beside a long burnt-out fire. The two adults looked at each other, then at the muttering boy, then back at each other. Then one seized him, telling him to snap out of it - but Kaga just looked up at him and said quite calmly, "I'm lonely. Are you a ghost? You're the first one I've physically seen so far."
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Author's note:
Well, that certainly was strange. Don't worry, Kaga will get better. Poor boy's been a bit traumatized, you see. Nothing serious or permanent - just needs his head screwed on a little tighter, you see. *grins* It won't be long until he really wakes up, don't you worry. Story's not ending with Kaga's head in the clouds. Oh! And actually, it snows in DECEMBER in Hokkaido, not August. I just made that up. Hokkaido's not THAT high in the Artic.
Andrea Weiling
It snowed the day he arrived on Hokkaido.
He'd been putting that thought out of his mind for the past week. It was only August - surely the winter wouldn't come that fast? But it had; while he swam, the flakes drifted down like lonely little clowns, dancing their way into the water, where they melted instantly. For one entire minute, he stopped and treaded water in the middle of the ocean, watching as the snow spiraled down from above. There was no time. He shouldn't have been surprised, of course - the weather had been turning steadily colder the week before, but certainly he hadn't been expecting snow until December. He'd circled a little corner of the large bulk of Hokkaido, looking for some quaint little fishing village he might live by so that he might get help when he most desperately needed it.
Not that he'd ever need help. He was alone now, and he liked that. He didn't need anyone bossing him around or anything anymore. He was independent now - he'd NEVER need someone else anymore, he'd survive all on his own, detached where no one could touch him.
In spite of the drastic change in weather, he swam at noon everyday, taking the afternoon to dry his blanket and his now-thoroughly shrunken clothes. Once, he'd been careless enough to sleep out in the open - the next morning the blanket and his clothes shone a crackling silver from the frost that had accumulated over the course of the night. He didn't make that mistake again; even as tired as he was after his swimming, he'd pull himself into a cave or some other semblance of shelter before hobbling around for dry wood to light a fire to. Similarly, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to find any dry tinder to light at all. Every night without fail, he would huddle under the still-damp blanket, staring into the flames as he wished for food. Sometimes he could catch some. Other times he wasn't so lucky.
It was getting so cold that he couldn't get up before nine without being frozen into an icicle. The temperature outside of his hovel of warmth inside of his blanket was scarcely warmer than the water, in which he swam in every day for the past two weeks. Now that he'd found a seaside village to park his winter camp by, he'd gone up on shore, still admiring the way those downy chips of ice turned lazily in midair.
He WAS a bit afraid now, he grudgingly admitted to himself. But he wouldn't ever tell that to anyone else, ever. There was no one to tell it to anyway.
The first night he spent on Hokkaido was spent in the forest. The village he'd seen was only a little ways from his makeshift camp, but he didn't want to rely on it for materials or anything. He lit a fire and collected enough brush to last one night and then laid out his clothes and his blanket to dry. He was glad that there was a little rock outcropping to hide him from the wind - but even more than that, he was surprised when night fell completely and no one from the village came to check out the smoke from the fire he'd made. Taking heart in the fact that possibly the villagers had heard of a certain mad juvenile delinquent on the loose, he resolved to pack up everything the next day and move to another place, away from human habitation. However, his gloating mood dissolved when he awoke the next day to somber skies and more fat flakes billowing down. Leaving the fire unattended (he knew that it wouldn't burn down the forest or anything - everything was too soaked), he wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and head, he walked out into the world.
Being from Tokyo, he'd seen snow in the streets, snow in movies, but never had he seen snow, THIS much snow, in a natural setting. He understood, just a little bit, why those crazy drunk poets from bygone ages wrote countless poems on the shape of trees and contrast of sunshine on glittering snow. These were large hexagonal chips of - something like icing he'd seen on a cake a long time ago - falling so silently and so effortlessly graceful, arraying his surroundings in a new white fur coat. He'd left his shoes on that first island he'd left, so the moment his toes found the ground covered with frost his entire body had started to shiver. But for the moment, all he could really see was the blanket, this NEW fashion of the world, watching him as he watched it. A sudden chill rippled through him, not from the cold.
"The world IS beautiful", he sucked in the cold air through his nose suddenly and felt his brain freeze up, sending sparks in front of his eyes. It was, after all - he almost felt like a child again, running through the streets, tumbling into drifts and sliding on the unseen panes of glass that coated the sidewalks and pedestrian crossings. But he wasn't there in the place of his memories, was he? He returned to reality, he was a juvenile delinquent running from the law to make some other life for himself. Was it possible to be surrounded by so much and be alone at the same time?
He knew why the Round Square wanted him to come here now, to isolate him in this place of silent watchfulness, as if all of Nature were watching him to see what move he would make first. In all the times before, he'd had someone he could blame, someone he could hurt physically. But how could a person hurt Nature? They could burn trees - but those grew back. They could kill the fish - but new ones would take their places. Nature was invincible - a person couldn't punch Nature and couldn't hurt Nature until every bone broke in their bodies and they were screaming with pain. Kaga knew, as well as any other person, that he couldn't fight the cold, couldn't cheat the hunger. He couldn't punch snowflakes. Whatever he did, he couldn't even make a dent in Nature because it would just regenerate, grow back over those old scars.
Here, he was tiny and insignificant, part of a larger circle that he couldn't control. This wasn't Tokyo, in this place there was no one to fear him and his angry fists, in this place there was no one to bully and toss around. There was no one to make him feel better here - there was no one here at all.
Suddenly he had to see another human being. For one bizarre moment, he wanted to shout for someone to listen to him, to pay attention to him - someone he could touch, someone who could feel pain, that pain inside of him. Faster and faster his feet flew, taking him into the midst of that town, desperation telling him to see someone, anyone. His breath came out in clouded gasps, puffing in front of him like ghosts - for indeed, the town was dead.
He entered the main square, silent except for the noiseless falling of snow. Squinting, he could almost pretend to himself that there were lights in the windows of the shops, imagine silhouettes against glass-paned windows, see the merriment of some Ainu festival or another. But no people were in the houses, not traversing the streets, not crowding the abandoned train station with its rusty red tracks. Against the glare of the newly fallen snow the windows peered like dark, hollowed-out eyes. Turning in a full circle around, he realized that he hadn't seen the desolation before, he hadn't paid attention to the half-hinged doors, the caved in roofs, the broken glass windows that hadn't been repaired. There was no other human soul here in sight, at least none visible. He shivered at the thought that ghosts might be inhabiting the place.
He chided his chattering nerves - he'd never been afraid of the preternatural before, never believed in anything supernatural before - it wasn't the time to start. And yet, he wasn't able to suppress that sudden fear of anything that moved. But there was much to fear if he was afraid of everything that moved, wasn't there? The snow drifted around him, the wind blowing against his ear - he felt everything so keenly now, the coldness of his toes and the frozen marrow of his bones. He HAD to find someone.
The panic set in suddenly, and he dashed to the front door of what used to be an inn. Knocking hard and receiving no answer to his pleas, he broke open the door and half-sobbing, ran up the stairs. He felt as if something was watching him, that sensation stronger than ever, as if the ghosts were following him, haunting his ever step - he didn't want to be there! He wanted to be back in Tokyo - even if he had to pay his jail sentence - even if he had to apologize to that Kimihiro - even if he had to be a slave for the rest of his life. He knew now that there was no one there, no proprietress and no owner, he was alone and completely cowed and insignificant - he'd never felt so small before -
- except, except . . .when his father beat him.
He knocked into a random door, suddenly, a small room that probably, in the prime of the inn's existence, would have cost a pretty penny because it looked out just over the town. The view from the window as especially pretty today because the snow had just newly fallen. Perhaps a strange sight because there were still red-and-yellow leaves on the trees because autumn hadn't completely passed yet and there was already snow on it. But his gaze wasn't on the pretty view - it was on just what was underneath the windowsill, facing him.
He had found his other human. The only problem was that the person had obviously been dead for some time now. The corpse at some point had been maggot-ridden, and beside it were those insects who had died when the corpse rotted. The clothes were still in pristine condition - a perfect preservation of the clothes of the 1980s - and the empty sockets where Asian almond eyes should have been stared up at Kaga as if in wonder that someone had finally come to visit him after all these years. One hand was stretched to hold the knees to the chest, the other was stretching out on the floor, splinters growing between the fingernail and the shriveled skin. It seemed to him that the corpse was reaching out to him. Then all at once, it reached up and grabbed his wrist where his arm hung at his side. The dank, scratchy skin horrified him.
Very uncharacteristically, he screamed. Wrenching his hand from the skeleton, he turned and ran, all the time feeling those empty black holes boring into his back, watching, always watching. He ran all the way back to the cave where the fire still burned merrily, where he huddled underneath the blanket and felt cold, clammy hands find their way around his neck and slowly strangle him underwater. He could hear them, of course, now that he'd seen the corpse - he could hear the voices of those lovely ghosts who he'd disturbed. And it made him very lonely that he was the only living thing among a world of dead.
And that was the way that the people found him, a day later, curled up in a fetal position beside a long burnt-out fire. The two adults looked at each other, then at the muttering boy, then back at each other. Then one seized him, telling him to snap out of it - but Kaga just looked up at him and said quite calmly, "I'm lonely. Are you a ghost? You're the first one I've physically seen so far."
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Author's note:
Well, that certainly was strange. Don't worry, Kaga will get better. Poor boy's been a bit traumatized, you see. Nothing serious or permanent - just needs his head screwed on a little tighter, you see. *grins* It won't be long until he really wakes up, don't you worry. Story's not ending with Kaga's head in the clouds. Oh! And actually, it snows in DECEMBER in Hokkaido, not August. I just made that up. Hokkaido's not THAT high in the Artic.
Andrea Weiling