1PIECE

SUGAR

The third time she says nothing. I hear her rummaging in a bag. The mono quality insect chorus of makeup containers. Lipsticks and compacts, mirrors and plastic handled brushes. Disjointed, muffled, protesting the intrusion of light fingers. The displacement stops with a final falling din. From the fresh silence, envelope sounds emerge. Rasping paper opening; soothing smooth withdrawal of contents. I hear a knee cracking as she squats. Not enough calcium in the diet. She is of the knock-kneed generation. The crippled hunch of old age too far away. The aching of bones an afterthought. Fashion never favours sensible shoes or posture. It’s about freedom to express yourself. Just like everyone else. You have the freedom of the prison yard. But only from five until six.

Knee uncracks, foot twists on the mat. Shuffle slide slip stand. I cannot move. I want to. She is holding me there, my ears open. My eyes wait for glimpses, my ears words. Her voice is floating. It rises like helium through the slot. High pitched and bouncing, smiling in sound.
“This is for you, Masa-kun. There is time on our side if nothing else. I will bring one more each time I visit. People are not as easy to judge as you may think. Maybe we will see more of each other. Maybe we won’t. It’s up to you. We are the sum of many parts, and this is the first. I hope that by the time you have seen me I will be able to see you as well.”

I taste sugar in my mouth. Sickly strawberry bread on my tastebuds. I swallow despite myself. Sweetness coats my tongue; slides down my throat. With the taste comes energy. It carves lethargy into bite-sized pieces. Easier to digest that way. Red jam meets red blood. The warmth is spreading as memories return. There was happiness back then. I forget that sometimes. But only sometimes, just like happiness. She is force-feeding me small pieces. What will happen when I am full?

“I will come back tomorrow, Masa-kun. Is that OK?” Consent escapes my lips before I can think. The word spits out, flying treacherously away. I am making it too easy for her. I don’t even know who she is. Just a foot and a voice for now. Her sounds accompany her receding presence. I sense she doesn’t look back. She has that certainty in her words. Why would she need to?

I slump down by the slot. Sugar crystallizes in my veins. Slows my heart rate. Anticipating whatever lies behind the wood. My eyes strain as I drag them upwards. Dark floor to light mat to something. She is mocking me, I am sure. A stuffed Kitty-Chan doll meets my eyes. It has no mouth. No-one can hear me speak. It can’t move; I can’t leave. We have more in common than I thought. But I scorn what it represents. That face value cuteness belies emptiness. It sits, arms outstretched, offering to my temple. A single Polaroid reflects the ceiling light. No one uses them anymore. Not in this megapixelled digital age. You can’t plug them into a computer. You can’t share them with the world. They are invisible to millions. Just for you and those close by. The personal touch and the naked eye. You can’t alter a Polaroid snap. They will curl, fade and spoil. They will crack and bend. But for one moment, they are the truth. They record what is real. There is no choice but to believe them.

WATER

All the world is water. A bitter and unrelenting mass, smashing the sides of the SS Nippon as it sails east to the West. Water, water everywhere; I want the ship to sink. The ship is stacked high with containers, a galaxy of metal-sided worlds buffeted by the storm and lashed by the vitriolic spray. The phalanx of salt-kissed soldiers weighs the ship down with their memories and battle scars, but provides ballast that saves it becoming lost in the fury. There is no scale, no count for these massed ranks of corrugated sentinels, taken wherever they are needed by forces they have no comprehension of. There are no volunteers amongst them; they are conscripts all. My container grinds against the others, its bindings wearing thin as they rub against corroded metal. One more gust, one more wave, one more trough could do it. The unseen steering from the distant cockpit see nothing, blinded to the storm by the harsh lights above them. The ship is on autopilot guided by human hands, man and machine second-guessing one another until they become alike, indivisible in the battle with nature. A voice on the tannoy blares commands, blurts orders, but the metallic tang of the speakers distorts the words so badly that by the time the storm’s fury has finished with them they become nothing more than white noise beneath the howling of the typhoon. They won’t be heard until it stops; won’t be understood until much later.



One last great lurch, and the grinding of metal stops. I am falling. My container has left the mass and is hurtling down into the maelstrom below. There is no more screeching, just the sound of anticipation filling my ears as I wait for the shock of impact. If I could see through the unflinching walls, I would see the Father beaming down benevolently with its snow-capped eyes, a purple myth in the distance. But the Father waits on dry land, far from the mayhem I inhabit, nothing more than a long-past lament, a story from childhood. I see you in my dreams, Father Fuji, but now I can sleep no longer.



The impact flings me from side to side, I have no control over my body, only watch the walls as they loom before my sorrow-flecked eyes, smashing into me again and again, until all that is left of me is lump of battered meat seeping blood from every opening. I cannot feel any more, can barely see, can only taste and smell blood, but one sense does not fail me. I hear nothing. The silence has me, will take me away from the storm, from the pain, from Father Fuji, and as I sink ever deeper into those black depths, I know that I can’t be hurt any more.

It isn’t really me that’s falling; it’s everything else. This land is weighed down by the burden of fashionable desire. Its people have become the labels they lust after: two-dimensional and over-priced. Chained forever to their origins by the forlorn hope of reversion to the old ways, they are as directionless as a flock of blind sheep. They are sinking into the darkest of futures, and no amount of imagined uniqueness will save them. They have been bought; and now they must pay. It is too late to save the nation; everyone must save themselves.



Yet I know it is futile: they will keep feeding the machinery that devours them until there is nothing left to consume. A fallacy of fads, fashions and freaks: this is my country, the land I had to leave.

Home for me is not this room, is not this country, is not amidst a laughing crowd at a neighbourhood festival, the smell of gunpowder lingering overhead. It isn’t in the sex-smeared room of an anonymous love hotel, or marching in besuited ranks, standard suitcase side-armed. It isn’t surrounded by the cute, the fluffy or the open-mouthed amazing. It isn’t ancestor worship in stone pillared cemeteries or ghostly temples, isn’t mad autumn sales or summer fireworks over the rice fields, isn’t even spring blossoms painting the world pink and white. No welcome chorus from shop assistants, no serried ranks of glass-fronted vending machines, no concrete skyscapes of neon horizons blight my home. Home is a place where red warning lights don’t blink from too distant building tops, where life isn’t a cartoon, where mountains are forever in the past and typhoons eternally in the future.

SECOND

Saturday morning dawns, I think. Another tetra pack is folded, awaits binding. Three more needed for a brick. I lie on my futon, listening to the rustling. Tiny feet on the plasticised surfaces. It echoes throughout the room. Fills my ears with its randomness. The roaches scurry like the people far below. Hurrying through street markets and across roads. Towards the malls, those beckoning temples of worship. The roaches need the dark and the grime. Requirements for existence. The people need the security of the malls. Reassurance that they are not alone out there. No danger of decision-making here. Just let the brightest lights guide your way. You are not alone.

I often contemplate trapping one of the roaches. Imprisoning it with a glass. Maybe even smashing it with a shoe. The temptation is there, the desire to experience. Seeking power of control over another being. It is a feeling I have never experienced. But I can remember being that roach myself. Too many times. The thought sickens me. Becoming a monster doesn’t banish the others.

She returns with genkiness in her voice. Two feet, two purple and orange cotton socks. The static electricity shicks as she approaches. Her power crackles in the hallway’s chill air.

‘Good Morning, Masa-kun!’
It was.
Could still be if she turns and leaves.
But she won’t.

‘I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Mei-chan.’ Her voice bounces like a labrador puppy’s ears. It skips over each sound and syllable. Only the lightest touch of inflection on each. All bare feet on hot summer concrete. There is a playfulness that betrays her. Without even looking, I know. She won’t be resting on her feet. Tiny hopping from one to the other. Shick, shick, shick. The power is building, humming in the air. Who is she? Is she from one of the ministries. A drug company rep? Is she a freelancer saving the Dream? Someone must be willing to pay her enough? When will she try to lure me out? Back into that world. I have worked so hard to escape it.

“My hobbies is going to shopping and listening music. My favourite bands is Bump of Chicken, SMAP and Morning Musume. I live in Shimokitazawa. I have one brother and sister. I like PARCO shopping and Shibuya One Oh Nine Building.”



Her voice bounces in all the wrong places. Like she went to English class somewhere but not for long enough. One thing I can do well, almost without effort. I never knew why, just accepted it. She must have learned when it was fashionable. Maybe it still is, nothing would surprise me. Except why she is speaking English to me. So it can be our little secret? So my parents cannot understand what we say? Trying to build a bond with me. It takes a lot more than broken Engrish. That shrink tried for hours. Not the universe building one. He gave up quickly. Another one; a rising star from Todai University. He had studied overseas, had learnt about empathy. The most un-Japanese of concepts.

“Tell me how you feel.”
I feel warm, can we open the window?
“That must be hard for you.”
Not as hard as it will be for you.
“You are not alone in this.”
Obviously not if you are here.
“Do you want to talk about it.”
Do I get a choice?
“I am here for you.”
Your choice, not mine.
“I am happy to just listen.”
To the sound of silence?



“I want to share your pain.”
Pass me a nail and turn your cheek this way.
“You can say anything you like to me.”
How about “Leave me alone”?
“You can trust me.”

I trust everyone who I’ve just met that looks like a scruffy academic with a receding hairline who sweats minutely every time I stare at him.

I marked them down as he said them. Every little cliché a point on his score. One hundred and sixty-seven in five hours. Going slowly mad as he repeated them. Him that is, not me. I insisted that we talk about his problems first. Anyone who would volunteer to spend hours talking to me must have more issues to deal with than even I do. He was playing tennis with a brick wall. No matter how hard he hit, the ball came back faster each time. I told him that I thought there might be a chance for me if I could find someone to talk to. He perked up, like an unbelievably gorgeous women had picked him out from all the other sweating losers in a bar and was genuinely interested in him. He sat up straighter, almost balancing on his hind legs like a dog waiting for a choc-coated treat.

I told him that that person would have to be available to talk to me at any time, day or night, and that I had a terrible fear of rejection and would certainly spiral into an irreversible decline if my calls ever went unanswered. His eyes were salivating, maybe he was seeing his head at the top of medical journal articles diagnosing the true cause of the social withdrawal phenomenon sweeping Japan. Public acclaim would follow, tenures, prizes, perhaps even a regular slot on a TV panel show as an informed commentator. He couldn’t write down his work, home and keitai numbers fast enough, and left in the highest of spirits, dreams of a book deal with a publisher no doubt filling his mind. I didn’t call him. He is probably still waiting, trying to convince himself that his ticket to fame and a career as a tarento will ring any moment.

She is still talking in the distance, listing her favourite chocolate bars, rattling off preferred holiday destinations in a measured cadence that is never interrupted by an intake of oxygen. Her intonation is weak and misplaced, and for all the bubbles in her voice her message becomes monotonous, like a phone without voicemail that no-one answers.

Ring ring.
“I love world peace.”
Ring ring.
“My favourite player baseball is Ichiro.”



Ring ring.
“I like eating barbecue with my friends at cherry blossom.”



Ring ring.
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
Ring?
“Why won’t you talk to me?”

I try to blank my mind. Give her nothing. But she can hear me thinking even that. See you next time. And she is gone.

TETRA

There is rustling in the tetra forest. Green tea leaves printed on plasticized cartons. I only drink green tea. I will live to one hundred and seven. I know these sounds from everyday. Usually I can’t hear them; just green noise. One of the few certainties I can trust. Bundles of eleven cartons. Only eleven, never more or less. I meant to make bundles of ten. But I miscounted the first time. My mind was elsewhere. The bundle just looked right. It fitted, on the floor in the corner. Had a sense of order about it. A mistake that had been meant to happen. It didn’t bother anyone, least of all me. I hated its lack of spirit and apathy. Too much of a reminder. But before long there were two. Soon there was a line of bundles. Now there is a low wall of them. Another obstacle for me to face and overcome. Someday I will have to fight them. They creep ever further across the floor. Towards my small patch of hard-won space. It shrinks as they grow. I know that one day they may overwhelm me. Without me, they are nothing. They cannot tie themselves together. Can’t stack themselves in tidy piles. Their forms hide the cockroaches. Magnifying the rustling with their emptiness. Hollow like so much around me. Echo chambers for tiny footfalls. Concert halls for insect symphonies. In different times I would relish their company. It is not their footfalls I resent.

Before I started working, I watched feet. There is something hypnotic about them. Few appreciate the attraction of ground hands. There is fluidity in their functioning. Simply breathtaking if properly observed. Adaptable to every challenge that life presents. The toes work together to provide stability. The arch soars above the ground, majestic skin. The heel anchors the body. We are nothing without them. They are always forgotten.

Father’s feet are big for a Japanese. Size 28 is not always available here. He had trouble finding styles he liked. Mother’s are unremarkable, so unfortunately average and forgettable. She could have her choice in any shop.



Sometimes I lie by the door watching. One-eyed through the slit. My left cheek pressed against the tatami. Always the left eye open. I know it’s stronger. The view is more complete if I use one. Father limps, never approaching the door any more. He has learned. Mother brings my food and manga alone. Three meals a day. Six hundred pages a week. Ten toes precede each arrival; two heels follow. Summer skin, winter socks, spring and autumn slippers. All avoid the one blight. The stain on the lemon fresh outer apartment. A single line of dark footprints leads away. From my door to anywhere else. I can only see the first six steps. I assume there are more. They have resisted Mother’s desperate attempts to remove them. Every gory particle clinging to the reed mesh. I admire their resilience. I hope they succumb before I do. No greater tragedy than parents outliving their children.

Would Mother and Father agree? Of course not. They would be delighted. Their only problem would be disposing of me. Very difficult to explain to the neighbours. After all, I left for America. Was it four years ago? Or had a terrible accident. Or went to prison. Or killed myself because of school exam pressures. Just too much for me. Or did I simply vanish, an unsolved mystery. Any of these is better than the truth. For them, at least. Better that I be dead to the world. Not just to them then. They tried once. Two nights after the long Chinese nails. That’s why Father limps.

RUTS

Kitchen voices bouncing off the metal door of the refrigerator.
“He’s hurt himself!”
“Good.”
Money well spent in his mind.
“He’s still your son, Toshi.”
“He stopped being my son, our son, when he went in there and nailed the door shut behind him. Now he’s just ‘your’ son, Mika. How do you know he’s hurt?”
Careful Father, that almost sounds like caring. Would you like a refund?
“There’s blood on the spoon.”
“I don’t care, I don’t want to know what sick things he is doing in there. Probably violating himself somehow. Nothing would surprise me anymore.”
This from a man who takes a risk by wearing a suit in a slightly lighter shade of gray.
“Masayuki. His name is Masayuki. He will always be our son.”
“Your son, woman, his name means nothing to me anymore. For me he doesn’t exist. This apartment stops at the end of the hall, one room less for you to clean every day. You should get out more. Go for coffee, take up tennis again. One less room means more time for you. You should make the best of this.”

He never understood his wife as my mother. In his mind, he always came first for her, but he didn’t ever think to ask her where her affections really lay. Lying together was an end for him but a means for her. I was her outlet, her filler of lonely days, her motivation. It has been so long but there is still guilt when I think of her. Memories of childhood caresses and maternal sweat cannot be easily erased. She must understand that I am doing this for her as well as me. The landscape is scored with more ruts than a powdered slope on the first day of snow season. So easy to fall into them and follow them all the way to the bottom, never seeing what is around you, only what is behind and ahead.

Racing down the ruts with no room to turn the skis to stop, onwards and downwards, enjoying the speed and the certainty of direction but sacrificing all independence. She found her rut when she married Father, proud in lilywhite at the Western show ceremony, the stack of cash-filled envelopes from guests the foundation of their future. She told herself that she wanted this life, this certainty, these guardrails. He had me because that was what was expected; she because it was what she truly wanted. Now the post-natal depression has returned for her, another void that she wishes was still filled. Worse because she can still hear her son breathing through the slot, can feel my half-gaze, can cry and know that I will think of her. I think she weeps because I was her future, and she knows that her rut has no end.

WORLDS

AIR CON

The black curtain is only moved after nightfall. During the daylight hours it stays in place across the forgotten doorway, held in position by the grime as by the cheap tacks pinning it to the walls around the sliding glass doors. I don’t know why they never tried to get in this way, across the naked balcony with its green metal railings. The stainless steel poles for washing hang overhead, threaded through the grey painted hooks embedded in the concrete ceiling. The building stands at the edge of the high-rise section, the last structure this tall for miles, looking out to the south-west where Fuji-san once stood in the distance. From here out it’s all mid-size apartment buildings and primary-coloured shopping complexes, their names written in English on their rooves. The apartments loom not tall enough from the darkness; rows of identical lights all pointing away like a thousand double-decker buses with plenty of passengers but nowhere to go. The shopping centres are surrounded by multi-storey car parks, the battlements to their retail keeps, floodlit all night so that no one will forget their existence during the night. Freeways flow between and around them, networks of overpasses and off-ramps that seem too numerous even for this city of twenty million insoles. The money was there to be spent, is the reasoning, what does it matter if this highway didn’t need another lane in each direction, or if that river didn’t need to be bridged? You can’t stop progress, they all say, we must keep moving. None of them seem to realise that progress means moving forwards, not just getting to the places you have already been in a few minutes less. The rivers of concrete pulsate through the darkness, arterial flows rarely stopped by blood-clot traffic jams. But these are no ordinary arteries: running in all directions, crossing each other, doubling back on themselves, merging into the distance before splitting again. They never end or begin, because for that you would require a heart.

The sliding doors look as they should, as if they haven’t opened in years. Stuck in place by a paste comprising lint, insect carcasses and airborne sweat particles which have flown from me during increasingly rare incidences of physical exertion on my part. Each summer’s humidity deepens the grime, adding new layers before the frozen nights of winter permafrosts them in place, writing the history of this room in dirt. The grooves along which the doors could once slide freely are encrusted with this muck, and the rounded sides of the glass panels are ill-served to act as icebreakers. I have long tried to cultivate the opacity of the glass, but despite being a much-smudged imitation of its formerly pristine self, it stubbornly resists all my entreaties to block out the light. The curtain does its work instead, sagging and musty, pinpricks where the tacks first went in now obscenely stretched like tribal ear lobes. It hangs infinitesimally lower each day, ever threatening to let in the world outside but never quite having the courage to betray me. Each night, when the forest-like outlines of the buildings below have been replaced by the ordered galaxy of firefly lights, I let it rest on the mats below, sleeping as I stir myself to action.

The parallel was too easy, easy enough for me to even consider it once. A sleepless night when I wondered whether it could be possible. No great tradition of it here but traditions have to start somewhere. We have imported so many other ideas there is no reason why this one couldn’t be adapted to this all-consuming culture. I write a single character on a flattened tetra carton and slide it through the slot. That part may take time. While I wait, I break the habit of more than a year and unpin the bottom right corner of the curtain, letting it swing back with the release of tension to allow a thin beam of light through. It looks like a laser, a beam from a robot’s eye burning brightly on the corner of my futon, scaring the dust particles that loiter guiltily in mid-air. Suddenly, I am afraid – what if I am right? I worry that it may be days until I am discovered. The irony of my predicament does not escape me, but the idea of my helpless body in death is very different to the choices I make for myself.

They descend at dusk like creatures from an alien world. I hear movement and crouch beside the curtain, sweating in the blanket warmth of summer. The apartment seems hotter than usual. Maybe I am sick again. I peer through the slimmest of cracks, straining my eyes in the dying day’s memories of light, desperate to know what they are doing so I can be ready. My fingers grope for the hammer, a conditioned response to any unexpected events. They can’t find it, and I cannot take my eyes off the slivered men for a second. Their voices float through the dirty pane, the angry voices of simple men forced to do something they don’t understand.

“The grandmother is dying in that bedroom? No wonder with that curtain blocking off the light! Since when does darkness make someone feel better?”
“I can’t believe we have to climb down from the bloody roof for this. Can’t they survive without an air conditioner for a few weeks? It will be autumn soon anyway. “
“Why can’t we just tip-toe through? If she’s dying anyway it won’t make any difference.”
“He said that she’s hooked up to all these machines and we might have tripped over them. Look at that door: it’s filthy. Probably wouldn’t open anyway.”
“I can’t believe he lets his wife get away with that. I would divorce my wife if she let our place get to that state.”
“You aren’t even married.”
“Well, if I was, that would be enough.”

They flit across my vision slit, my eyes racing to catch them and focus. Segmented beams of headlights and swatches of shiny orange reflector vest, glints of metal-buckled harnesses and safety gloved thumbs. Sliding carefully down the face of the building on ropes to land on my balcony. Are they are some hikikomori removal squad, ready to burst in and drag me back into life. It has happened to others: crashing and grasping hands and wailing and kicking and biting and threats and restraints and being handcuffed to a nice clean hospital bed while they sponge the accumulated filth off you and ask questions until your eardrums bleed. They will put me in an all-white room with mirrored glass on either side so that the medical specialists and psychologists can study me and read my dreams.

“Nearly five years? That’s the longest yet!”
“I hear there is one in Hokkaido who has been in nine years. He’s fought off three extrication attempts with a can of deodorant and a lighter.”
“They’ll never get him out. Not worth the trouble. I don’t know why we bother with these ones at all. Let them stay there until they starve.”

The pride in my achievement will be tempered by the knowledge that the nameless, faceless guy up north has been in longer. Time for the quality not quantity argument. Fewer people than cows up there. Less eyes on the country hicks, not like the motion sensors of Tokyo. Not like Mrs Sato. Impossible to judge without talking to him. That’s never going to happen.

“What did his parents say?”
“They’re in the next room; had to be sedated. Charges may be brought against them for wasting municipal funds.”
“Perhaps if those goons in the snatch squads stopped using tear gas grenades we wouldn’t have to keep paying off the neighbours to not go to the press.”
“The neighbours should be charged as well, what kind of idiots believe that someone can homestay for five years?”
“Does that make them good or bad neighbours?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“What did you say his name was? I need it for the form.”
“No idea, the guys who brought him in didn’t tell me.”
“How many have we had this week?”
“Six, if you count that one who jumped out the window on his first night.”
“Do we start agin or just keep going?’
‘Makes no difference to me. ‘
‘Listen, we’ll call this one ‘Seven’ until the paperwork comes through. Much easier to remember him that way.”
“Fine with me. Saves a phone call.”

I have been here five years and even in my dreams they do not know me. The temptation lingers uncomfortably, like the half-memory of an unlocked door, but I cannot show them who I am. Some grimy creature bursting out from a black space containing a dying pensioner.

The shock would be too much for them. One might even fall off the balcony in surprise, but there are no guarantees. If I knew for sure I would do it. But he won’t so I won’t. I wouldn’t be Masayuki to them, just ‘crazed hermit’ or ‘deranged hikikomori’. I have spent too many days alone to waste them on a forgettable paragraph on the inside page of a tabloid.

There should be front page headlines, “Tokyo Man defies society for five years” or “Recluse sees through nation’s lies”. But that might make me a visionary, an oracle, a figure of authority for a public aching to be told what to do. I would appear on panel programs, between the musical bimbo of the week and an ancient but still revered one-joke comedian in his trademark novelty sunglasses. Everything I have fought for would fade into nothing, one more banished shadow under the unrelenting studio lights. I look at every day here as one more layer of substance. They may be thin layers but they accumulate and gather significance as they grow. I am rebuilding myself from the ground up, layer upon layer, slice upon slice. I don’t know when I will finish. I know I am not finished yet.

I cannot go out like this and breath their air. Is this part of their plan? So obvious that they thought I might overlook it. Air conditioning. Air. Conditioning. Conditioning air. The scourge of Japan – that invisible force that manages mass coercion, collusion and cooperation. A toxic nerve gas that excises only the decision-making and creative sectors of the brain, replacing them with a greater desire to nod, agree and follow.

I must stay focused. Dreams of fame and mass conditioning threaten my concentration. My blood is betraying me, lusting for the national reverie, a stream seeking an ocean. I will let it go, but I am not going with it.

MEIKA II

I want her words, her thoughts, raindrops raindrops. There is nothing but raindrops, falling on my mind. It is raining in my head. I can hear drops land within my ears. I panic, want to scream. I am drowning from the inside. Skull filling faster than a baby’s bath. This girl is killing me. This is not right. She is meant to save, to wait. Then to talk, to tire. Still no words from her mind. Raindrops keep falling in my head. “Pull the plug.” The suggestion floats through the wood. Squeezing between the drops. So softly I nearly don’t hear it. “Pull the plug, Masa-kun.” I am confused, drowning from within. My eyes fill with fresh water from nowhere. From her? At last, I understand.

Clear water gushes from my open mouth. Coursing through the rough beard. Blackening as it washes across my skin. I shake my head in disbelief. Not just clear but icy cold. Mountain streams crossed by forty-two winter hikers. Water rising over the bootlaces. Embrace nature. No one falls behind. We keep walking because everyone else does. Our teeth chatter and our fingertips lose feeling. We show no emotion, just prescribed determination. They expect us to suffer. Nature is the highest state. It is the making of us. As long as we all suffer the same. That night: back at the camp-site. Forty-one elementary school children shivering. Forty-one too-thin blankets. The lights are long off. We see the flashing red and blue. Chinks of ambulance through the shutters. The driver turned his siren off long before. They must have told him. We hear teachers’ voices. We hear Erina coughing. She began after the first stream. We hear the voices rise and fall. Tree branches flailing before the storm. The ambulance doors slam shut. A radio squawks. The voices die as the ambulance crushes gravel. A teacher collects Erina’s things in the morning. I try hard, but can’t remember his name.

I know there are two worlds. My own and outside.

The shock of the cold focuses my thoughts. I try to close my mouth. The water pressure forces my teeth apart. They ache with the cold. My tongue flops uselessly in the current. A life raft too far off to reach. Level dropping as the flood steals away. Down from my eyes. Through my throat. I feel it seeping from me, draining away. Consuming my dust and dirt as it vanishes. There is no puddle on the carpet. My clothes are dry. My skin has shed its defensive crust. It is my thoughts she is after.

She has stripped away my carefully cultivated armour. Four plus years of half-hearted towelette dabbing. Only when I feel like it. Most days I only wipe features. Eyes, ears and nose. The rest of me armoured, only sensors accessible. There was a comfort in the grime. Knowledge that I had created something. A sign I was finally my own man. I feel hatred welling. Replacing the water with hot resentment. How dare she? She is trying to break me. Smash me into fragments for society. Sweep up and shovel. Flip the bin top, drop me in. Tear me like tissue paper. Return me to the fold. This is no introduction but an act of war. I hammer at the door with my fists. She has twisted the cell bars around. Now I am the one who is trapped.

I crumple in disbelief. Beaten by a girl. An imp in pink and white socks. I can no longer call myself a man. Does that matter? Is this how I react? Maybe just how I am supposed to. I want to hurt her. Just as she has hurt me. To feel the pain, the helplessness, the agony. I feel it now. She is trying to stop my work. She doesn’t know what it is. They have sent her. I don’t know who they are. Every time you walk down a city street. Someone is watching you. You don’t know them. They don’t know you. We watch without realising. Stuff ourselves on a Viking banquet of faces. Our appetites are relentless. One day back then I counted. In the time before. Thirty-seven people between my parents’ apartment and school. Face. Click. Forgotten. Face. Click. Maybe remembered. Face. Strange ears. Click. Stored. A whole class of people discovered and discarded. The next day, I counted forty-six. I realised how many people were watching me. Each and every day. One way glass on both sides. That worried me then. The pressure to perform was constant. I stopped being a child. I began to feel their expectations. They were watching me around the clock. Waiting for...waiting for I don’t know what. A mistake? A failure? No-one remembers the good things we do. “Boy smiles in street” is not newsworthy. Not when so many other things are happening.

I slide to the floor. The hammer’s certainty is reassuring. Metal and wood cannot judge, only serve. I tiptoe on my fingertips. My face approaches the slot beneath the door. I plan where to strike. The hammer will smash down. Pink and white will become red. Her voice will ring out again. She will scream as she hops away. Leaving only her footprints in the hall. Back to them: then they will know. I will not be stopped. I cannot be. Cheap wood and unpolished metal. Nothing by themselves. How little they know. I am nearly there. Eyesights are ready to lock onto their target. Lower, until I can smell the dust. Lower, until my nose touches the mat. Lower, as my face turns towards the light. And sees hers.

No set of cotton-wrapped five. No choice. Just one cheek, cartoon smooth. No features. Her makeup glitters, sparkles. The dark inside the light outside the darkness. I have not made a sound. I can’t look away. Too many things I don’t understand. But that is impossible. She cannot be. But she is.
“Hello, Masa-kun.”

Spoken from six inches, but minutes to process. My features can’t make out hers. These are words I cannot ignore. She knows I can hear her. The skin I can see is clean. Her cheek distorts where it touches the floor. There is something wrong with her fringe. It isn’t regulation.

I never understood my teachers’ obsession with hair. Boys must have theirs cut high. Above the ears, above the collar. Straight and naturally coloured. No bleach, no dye. No life but what it started with. Same for girls, just not as short. Tie it back tightly, away from the face. Let us see who you are. We know what you are thinking. The others never realised what was happening. They were stifling our receptors, cutting our antennae. Someone told me that the school-issue hair ties had been treated with a chemical compound. That’s just crazy talk. They stood by the gates each morning. Looking for a stray lock, a hint of curl. Offenders would be picked out, marched away. Ordered to remedy their distinction. We can’t have you standing out. Hairnets were issued where warnings were insufficient. Toshio tried to hide his bleaching. He only used a cap. He never had a chance. They picked him out and pulled it off. The rest of us looked away. It was easier not to know him then. We were scared without a reason to fear. Our hair was straight, black and military short. Toshio got a week’s suspension. Three dates from girls in our class too. He returned to school with a crew cut. A small scar above his right ear. The barber had gone too close. Rumours that the head cut it himself. In his office during maths class. There were a lot of rumours back then.



My thoughts darken, fading to black. Toshio’s scarred scalp simpers out of mind forever. I open my eyes to more darkness. Familiar gloom replaced by a featureless nothing. I am submerged in a tank of ink. For minutes, it seems like nothing will happen. My ears imagine some barely discernible current. Submerged and vanishing in the deep, dark liquid. I have no sense of movement. No feelings or known future to play with. Shapes form in the nothingness before me. An invisible pen drawing in fluorescent pink. Realisation dawns long before the drawing is completed. No Japanese could ever mistake or forget it. Try as hard as you might. It won’t make a difference. I know then that it is her doing. The sign that she must be defeated. She has left me with the cartoon cat. The face has launched a thousand shopping trips. Two softly pointed ears. Six afterthought whiskers. A bow stuck to the forehead. The eyes are no more than solid pupils. Lenses damned to remain forever open. The nose is hollow. There is no mouth. That avoids both temptation and complication. Kitty-chan: the symbol of a nation. The goddess of a people. Totem of a nameless girl. Resplendent in pink and white socks.

The cat’s head burns itself into my vision. Blazing within the black emptiness. Finally, it too fades, and there is nothing. She is gone.

I cannot work that night. Bad deeds go unrecorded. The virus continues to spread. Post-work shoppers and tired schoolchildren thronging defenceless streets. Immune systems weakened in the factory schools and sterile offices. Eroded by hours of rote learning and climate control.

MEIKA I

There is such beauty in the search for a greater reality. After nearly five years my work produces results. I know this because they send her.

She is introduced by silence. No words from Mother and Father. (Which is no introduction at all.) Months since they last spoke to me. They could only criticise or complain. But they cannot do this here. They might be noticed. Even if only by me. All this time of secrets has passed. They can’t confide in anyone, not even me. Maybe they think I will forget everything. Stop my work and join their conspiracy. They wanted me to come out once. That time is long gone. Too many absent seconds passed. Long afraid that I won’t leave my room. Their greatest fear now is that I will. This makes her arrival very puzzling. Surely they can’t have approached her? But she couldn’t find me on her own. Unless the neighbours know. But they can’t. I would have heard their thoughts. I read the clean thoughts of my parents. Baby-changing tables laid bare. The smell of liquid soap and detergent. There is nothing. Perhaps they have stopped thinking about everything. Not just me.

She is different. She wears pink and white striped socks. They are puffy like a schoolgirl’s. She has small feet. She must have poor balance. She skips down the hall. She steps on two of the footprints. She doesn’t seem to care. A musical knock radiates cute through the wood. I despise her instantly.
“Masa-kun!”
“Masa-kun!”
“Masa-kun!”
“Masa-kun!”
Voice somewhere between a squeak and a squelch. It bounces while it lingers. Echoes around my walls. Ichi, ni, san, yon. The tetra forest absorbs it. Groups of four are never good luck. Doesn’t she know anything?

“Masa-kun!”

I reach for the hammer. Ready to crush her multi-coloured toes. One more time; just once more. I calculate who this faceless figure is. What she says in her rubber bubble voice. I know who she is. I have seen the newsgroup stories. My world has one link to hers. The glowing screen full of faces unseen. She is here to stop my work. She must be from Newstart. It fought every obstacle just to exist. Only then could it begin its work. Helping people who don’t want to be helped. Getting no help from anyone else. Hard to fight a problem that doesn’t exist. Evidence of a problem proves a fault. A fault demands that responsibility be claimed. Public claims lead to public shame. No-one is ready for that. Better to keep the monsters locked away. Hidden within the home, that private prison. Four walls and familiar sounds. The smells you grew up with. The feeling you can’t forget.

I know their brief, know their time frame. If I resist her for eighteen months. If I can. If I am strong enough. I will be free forever. After that she must leave. Must trampoline away into anywhere but outside here. Finally, I will have peace. I don’t know how many have held out. Eighteen months doesn’t seem so long. I have been here three times that already. But Mother and Father gave up after days. Imprisoned in their resignation. They were amateurs at best. Two broken toes and their fight vanished. So did their son.

She is not the one I expected. Maybe I haven’t been here long enough. Not to deserve a true opponent. She sounds new. Must be. Is. She should be middle-aged and sour-faced. Definitely world-weary but with a good heart. She should be the teacher; social worker; parent. You see them in American movies. The ones who use tough love to save. She should wear a jersey or a cardigan. They make you feel at ease that way. She should have labourer’s hands. Five-fingered mementoes of a difficult but rewarding life. She should not be attractive at all. Not even remotely. Isolated young men have very vivid imaginations. I thought about her breasts first. Flat or round. Hanging or squashed across her chest. Just another way to tempt me out. No curiosity can overcome my reasons for staying. Breasts are not a sign of society learning. More the roots of problems, reasons for yearning. This is why breasts are over the heart. No man can ever see what you really think. Two many distractions in the way. Who chooses to look into the heart? To look down a sewer in open fields? No-one visits zoos to see vets.

I stand up as quietly as I can. She cannot know I can hear her. Let her think I am sleeping, dying, dead. I don’t need to be saved. There is silence through the door. I have not heard her move. She must be standing outside. Waiting for a grunt, word, or escaping breath. We do not have a relationship. She will get none of these. I concentrate on her thoughts. There is nothing. I focus my mind. Willing the receptors to find every scrap. Collect the information she is emitting.

SHRINK

A psychologist came once. He spent hours asking me questions about what I believed in. About why I wouldn’t leave my room. Why I had treated mother and father so badly. He asked me about my favourite colour. Which subject I liked most at school. Hundreds of questions. He perched on a low stool outside my door. He wore black patent leather shoes. His sock cotton was starting to fray. The socks were black; the material magnetic. Attracted the microscopic dust fleeing mother’s pogroms. He wanted to know if I loved her. Had I been bullied at school? Did I want to kill father? I used the internet a lot, didn’t I?

Later, he talked to my parents. I heard him; I had heard his questions. He spat out symptoms into spaces between them. I was typical of a growing group. Another Japanese youth reacting against society. Protesting in some youthfully selfish way. No concern for all they had given me. I was shunning the physical world. I had been corrupted by foreign ideas. Individualism was my disease. I lacked respect for Japanese values. Those ideals our nation was based on. Built on. And now, I thought, subsiding on.



No empathy. No respect. No remorse. His syllables crept down the bare-faced hallway. They nestled in my ears. I welcomed them home. Narcissist, lunatic, ungrateful son. Maybe, no, yes. They failed in their duties. Parents should protect and nurture. They failed me. He built hostile armies with his words. Legions uniting to threaten and destroy me. They try to storm my imaginary castle. My unfurled standard taunts them on the breeze. He painted landscapes I had never seen. Panoramic views of hazy scenes I did not know. They fitted his books and his ignorance. My mind and body stayed immune. The words built like layers; deck of cards. I moved lower and lower. The dealer’s hand approaches, waits at the bottom. I sink lower and lower. Then his words could not reach me anymore.

He spoke a universe in six hours. I was his distant star, twinkling in blackness. All alone and the better for it. He marshalled galaxies of words to confuse. I could say the same in five. And still he asks the question. Why do I want to be alone?

The hardest part is staying focused. I know what I need to do, but the path taking me from anywhere to there shifts like the pavement beneath a drunken office worker at closing time. The voices calling me away clutch at my sleeves from time to time, different voices using different words but all replaying the same message.

Father appeals to the pragmatism and sense of duty that has served his generation so well, cold and practical tones desperate to hide the frustration that produces them.

“You are throwing away every opportunity I have given you, Masayuki. You are a strong student; even your English skills by themself are enough to guarantee you a fine job. I have talked to Takaguchi-san at the company and he says there is an entry-level position you could get in our international sales section once you graduate from university.”
I could even wear your old suits, unless they are too small for me.

“Do you know how many times I have had to laugh at his jokes just to get that offer? How many hours I have had to stay there after everyone else has gone home just to stay ahead and in his favour?”

Did he have a choice? I don’t know if it is important. All the unspoken threats that kept him back for so many evenings and made him rise early. Did anyone ever actually tell him that if he didn’t volunteer for overtime someone else would be sitting at his desk when he come back the next day? I want to think that he just believed it because the others did, because none of them ever had the courage to find out for sure. Just like one of those stories that starts as a throwaway whisper before school, is a strong rumour by recess and a widely known and indisputable fact by lunch. Yasu likes Ai. Yasu and Ai are sleeping together. They went to a love hotel. He wasn’t careful. She might be pregnant. She is pregnant. The baby is due in summer vacation. She will fly to Okinawa to have it. All of this from someone who saw them walking to the station together. Maybe he bought a can of coffee from her. Ai’s having an island baby. Father will lose his job if he doesn’t stay back four hours every night.



Six o’clock and the boss switches the lights off and orders them to go home, all serious and official. Government ordinance compliance perfectly adhered to. Six-oh-five and they stand in a group outside the building, smoking frantically and laughing nervously. The government are stupid. As if they would want to work nine hour days. They are smarter than the politicians. They love their company. Six ten and they are back at their desks. If anyone asks, work finished ten minutes ago.

“I do all this for you, and you do not even have the respect for me to come out and tell me to my face why you are doing this. I can’t even understand it. You can’t stay in there forever. What are you going to achieve in there? You won’t get into university, you can’t get a job, you won’t get married. How long can you lie there in that stench?”

Every piece of logic he throws at me has merit, is true in his mind and in the minds of those he knows, but he hasn’t known me for a long time. I don’t experience his dreams in my sleep, those monotone serials which all end in the same way. The dutiful but subservient wife, the cramped apartment in the suburbs, the unpaid overtime and the receding hairline. All carefully wrapped and rewrapped in the fabric of Japanese society, each layer kept separate from the others, all insulated from the extremes of temperature and fashion and sealed off from the outside air until they, like the dreamer, suffocate.

I fight his common sense with self-confidence and the only argument left to a true thinker: the certainty that only those things that feature in my dreams are what I want, no matter how much others recommend the alternatives. So my dreams are not yet clear; perhaps this is a weakness in the argument I present, but only when I can cut myself off completely will I have the space and the peace to discover my destiny. For now you will have to be satisfied with knowing that I know that what they want for me is not right.

I read about others like me on the internet: the outsiders, the withdrawn. Our country has been thoughtful enough to coin a name for our ‘condition’: hikikomori. Spit out the word like the plastic corner of an onigiri wrapper you have bitten open. Spit it out so that it gets as far away from your mouth as possible before anyone can connect you too it. One day they will realise that a choice is not a ‘condition’. Their word implies something medical or some kind of deficiency, maybe a mental defect of some description that makes us unable to ignore the elephant in the room like everyone else seems to. So many elephants in so many rooms throughout the city and the nation that I often wonder whether they have become extinct in Africa.

He reads my mind. Final words beneath a twitching nose. Just a bit bigger than mine.
“You don’t want my life? Don’t want a job? Too much hard work, too much overtime? Four hours extra a day doesn’t appeal? Remember this: I always come home eventually.”

FALLING

Sadness inspires. Memory Recalls. Midnght our time.

HAYASHI 911

Hayashi-San was the last whole human I saw. My neighbour in the building and the lift. Riding up when I returned from the shop. Black hair, black eyes, black shirt. Old cowboy boots, black pants. Everything about him was hairy. Even the backs of his hands were downy. How well could he know them under that? Could he ever know anything well? Facial features suffocating under a black follicle blanket. Another wannabe musician trying to capture a vibe. No-one had it in the first place. Too old to be flavour of the day. Too young to have retro appeal. Counting the days until he can be something. I never saw him on TV. That is the real sign of success. He probably went through his life angry. Real talent is never appreciated. Never know how right and wrong he was. He didn’t say anything to me, just nodded. He had already pushed the button. I never had a choice.

I stepped out first. Imagining the lift doors slamming shut. Pinning him in a metal vice. Half-in and half-out of the lift. It happened to a kid in Tokyo. Cut in half when the lift dropped. I could never work out how it happened. The floor doesn’t look all that sharp. I felt sorry for the building’s cleaner. Turns up for work with mop and bucket. Ready to deal with a few muddy footprints. Maybe a spilled drink. Coffee; if it’s really bad. ‘I nearly forgot to mention something, Mrs Cleaner. There’s half a stupid boy in the lift. The other half is up on seven. He left a lot of blood. Such a lack of consideration for others. We only laid that carpet last year. I know you will do your best.’ That would have ruined her day. Maybe she didn’t even get a lunch break. The paper didn’t say.

Nothing happens. Of course it didn’t. Hayashi escaped the lift of death with ease. He disappeared down the corridor to the left. The sound of his boots clicked on the floor. The most convincing soundtrack he will ever make. His cadence slowed and died near his apartment. He entered it without looking back. He had no reason to. I didn’t have the scar then.

I flip the page. I want to know what I do next. It is blank. So is the next page. And the one after that. Do I have to draw it myself? Is it showing me what will happen? I push myself up from my futon. Mother hasn’t cleaned my sheets in weeks. She doesn’t care anymore. I have to remind her of her responsibilities. I see her feet most days. Framed by the thin hole in my door. Sometimes I see a hand. Always shaking when she pushes the food through. Her fingers never cross the threshold. The bowl is always halfway through the opening. It is a cheap plastic bowl. It doesn’t shatter. I have tried. The bowl used to be ceramic. A civilized dish with a floral pattern. She over-cooked the rice once. Nothing more than slop. She might have fed it to a pig. She has never been to the country. I went once, on a school trip. The pigs looked happy enough with their slop. A bowl of food without love. Love brings love as life brings life. Her rice had neither. She fed it to me. The seasoning had sunk down into the sludge. A ceramic bowl of bubbling mush. Maybe she thought I was a baby. Am I unable to eat solid food? She has reduced me from a boy.

Years falling back and away like discarded feathers. In her world I am the immortal boy. Easier to remember me that way. Better to think of the food as offerings. Tribute to the dead son she wants back. Not food for the living man she despises. She must do. I can understand that. I hope she does. Then her life can go on. It will give her a purpose. She does not know who I have become. We are strangers in time if not space. I am the boy she once tickled on her knee. Tears of laughter splashing onto her apron. Mine and hers, large and small. Now she has shrunk, withering in her hopelessness. Father is no help, he clutches the remote. I am a program that bores him. I am a network that was disconnected. A pay station he has no money for. There is always another channel on the remote. Escape is just a button push away. I am a show he hates but others love. Running live to air, seven days a week. He never watches, but he knows I exist. He hasn’t seen my character grow. He hasn’t grown older with me. I was his hope and his boy. Cue his despair and my own man.

Men do not eat like pigs. I want to tip it out the kitchen window to land on someone below. They deserve it, all the way down there. Instead, I smashed the bowl against the wall, splashing the globules of rice against the walls like victims of a culinary car crash. I spent hours locating every fragment of china. I cut my fingers on invisible shards. Pressed them down onto the matting. Only way to pick them up. Stuck to my skin with the dust. Diamonds in the dirt. I heaped them carefully before the opening. I pushed the bloody fragments to Mother’s world. They were her problem again. Now the bowl is plastic. It bends but never breaks. It’s much better that way.

I dress carefully. Need to look my best. The t-shirt has yellow patches under the armpits. They have been there since last summer. I can’t smell them anymore. I don’t think I can smell anything. Maybe it is Mother’s cooking. She has drained the love from the food. Then she slides it under my door. I haven’t seen Father’s flesh in months. One black leather lace-up or two on weekdays. His too-white sneakers on Sundays. He polishes them religiously; doesn’t believe in God. Does believe in proper attire though. His generation doesn’t wear shorts in public. They are undignified, even at the beach. I think he even wears pants in bed. I can’t remember what his legs look like. He is doing it again. They both are. They are stealing into my mind. I don’t want to think about them. Sneaking in soft-footed, part of my mental furniture. They blend into the scene. Unobtrusive and comfortable, no ambitions whatsoever. They are nothing but convenience store clerks now. They provide barely nutritious food with resigned looks. All they lack is a uniform. All they have is their unchanging faces. I must remind them about name-tags in future.

My jeans still fit. I don’t eat as much as I did. I don’t get out much either. The nutritional yin completes the sedentary yang. Balance is important. A growing boy must eat. No more bottom of the soup dish seconds. Sometimes no firsts either. I serve myself from what they provide. Tuck the t-shirt into the waist of my jeans. Left side front round to left side back. Right side front round to right side back. Fingertip check meeting points in front and behind. Locate creases. Run fingernails down seams to straighten. Also cleans fingernails. I need to look nice for work today. There can be no distractions. No-one else can do this for me.

One day I realised that something was wrong. Just one day, it had to happen sometime. I was drifting. No nails to keep me in place. I saw a man falling. He fell in September. I was younger then. We all were. We didn’t know. They still don’t. I watched him fall. Tumbling end over end towards his own. He was too far away, thousands of miles. He fell too far; hundreds of feet. His form was tiny inside my monitor. Just thirteen inches across.

Pieces of his world fell with him. Dancing and spinning on the downtown currents. Air-cooled shards of glass and steel. Fragments of flame-licked balance sheets. Singed account books. Scraps of hard currency rendered worthless. A soundtrack of primal screams and groaning metal. The lyrics are never to be forgotten. Hayashi-San dreams of such success.

He didn’t have a name. Perhaps he didn’t need one. I didn’t know him then. Even now I only know of him. He is what he represents. His name is as insignificant as his face. He is just like me. I imagine a face on his body. It is flitting across the pixels, plummeting. I want it to be my face. Want it to be me plunging downwards. I envy everything about him. His pain will be over soon. His story has an ending.

So many people saw him fall. How many imagined him screaming? He became iconic, but no-one knew his name. Books have been written about him. Films as well as TV programs. Hour after hour of slow motion footage. All refining him, showing him more clearly. Still no-one knows him, claims him; wants him. He could have seen the world from up there. One hundred floors up on the mountain top. He had everything but a window that opened. In case of fire, break glass. What chance have I got? All of his riches. All that he could see. He is still just the fallen man. Just like I will be.

SHUTTERS

I saw the bookends in a deserted shopping arcade. Painted on metal roller doors by faceless artists. Dissected by horizontal grooves with surgical precision. I used to pass them on the way to school. Watching the rubbish drift, imagining the absent life. Taichiroh. H, green-fire breathing yellow dragon. Soft body under lumpy spine. Round eyes seeing all. Painted like bulls-eyes: white, navy, yellow, blue. Drawing you in and away. A picket fence behind the monster. A green business tie around its neck. Sun peeking from top left corner. Normality can’t be that easy. Under the dragon’s plinth reads the English: “Good Morning! It’s time for you to wake up and attend to your business.” Even the cartoons here give orders. Three-clawed feet, bright yellow skin. Start the day the dragon way. Start it now or you’ll be dragged away.

The next shutter is Keisuke. M’s. A white lion in leopard print pyjama pants. His tail ambles out behind, sprouting flowers. Picket fence again, marks the boundary of home. Your eyes are sleepy, his eyelids droop. Narrow vision, tunnel focus, cat’s eyes, feline seduction. “I know everything about you... I see you evertime and everwhere. Good night.” He is watching you always. He is not alone. He has the knowledge you seek. That knowing of you, you cannot have. That is the power he holds as you sleep. He sits like an artist’s model. Poses for the brush or the camera. Take a little more off, Mr Lion. You look so beautiful right now. No one ever says that to me. There is always something to improve. Heights to scale that keep rising. Another peak over every crest. Know that you can always be better. Accept that you will never be best.

A dragon to start, a lion to end. In between you must fend for yourself.

PURPOSE?

HOMESTAY

“You do want to see him, Toshi. I know you do.”
“All he has to do is open the door.”
“We should open it for him.”
“We tried that once, Mika. Don’t you remember? My bloody foot still hurts with every step. Everyone at the office thinks it’s a bone spur. I miss every work golf day because of it. That clown Fujihara gets to suck up to the boss around eighteen holes, even carries his clubs for him while he kisses ass in that whiny little voice of his. And you wonder why I haven’t been promoted in two years.”

“Maybe we should try again, it’s been so long.”
“Maybe we should have another baby. Is there still life in that womb of yours? We can go to our room and we’ll make another one. Nine months from now and we can forget about him in there. Leave him there until the dirt suffocates him. We don’t owe him anything now. He can’t be helped.”
‘But I think we should try once more. He has had some time to think about things. I’m sure he still loves us. Please Toshi, can we try again?”

“If we do that, we lose. How can you be so thoughtless? I kill myself all day to provide for you and that one in there and what thanks do I get for it? All you do is complain. He never says anything at all. There are times when I don’t know which is worse. The only reason we know he is alive is that the food keeps disappearing.”

“He’s got problems. We have to allow for that. We should have been better parents to him. A lot of this must be our fault.”
“Why? Give me one good reason why I should care. He has everything he wants, all those sneakers and manga and computer games and privacy, everything he ever asked for you made sure he got because he’s your precious son and he can’t go without. Every talk show with baby tips you watched; you’ve read every book about raising children. All that time you wasted on him. WE wasted on him. All I ask is that he shows his face sometimes. He is our son, not our lord.”
“He just needs time to get his head straight.”

“How much time does he need, Reiko? There are days that I hope that you and I get involved in a car crash or something. Then what’s he going to do? What happens when the meals stop getting pushed under the door, when you stop carting away his plastic bags of shit and bottles of piss? Is he going to stay there stuck in his own filth? I’m surprised you don’t reach through that slot to wipe his ass for him. I can’t fight both of you, woman. He isn’t a baby any more. Sometimes I think you wish you could lie down on the floor there so you could suckle him again. It makes me sick.”

“He is still my son. He is still your son. He needs time and then everything will be all right. He was always a thinker. Maybe he just has all these wonderful ideas and he needs time to think them through so he can get them just right and then he’s going to come out and everyone will be amazed.”

“Of course they’ll all be amazed, they think he’s overseas studying English with some loving family in California. You think he needs more time? Let him have the future then. He can have the whole bloody lot, forever or longer if he needs. He can stay there in that room until he rots away to nothing. I am so sick of the smell of air freshener. Even my dreams smell of ‘ocean breeze’. One day someone will find out, and I don’t even know if I care anymore. No-one is going to believe that he’s on a homestay in America for more than two years. Even that long is hard enough. I think Hayashi-san is getting suspicious; there is something different in the way that he grunts at me these days. And if a drug-head like him is starting to wonder, you can be sure Mrs Sato down the hall with her itchy phone-dialling finger is just looking for an excuse to call the police.”

HAMMER

They came at night, driven close by shame. Of admitting, of losing, of parental failure. It’s only natural, most people should sleep then. Had always been that way in their world. Meant less hiding, outwardly at least. But their world holds nothing but memories. Creaking planks in nightingale floors. A Kyoto excursion for second year history class. Fittings warning of danger, of strangers slipping through. Beware the enemy from outside. No sense of the danger within. Floors that warn of intruders betray escapers too. For me, escape does not mean leaving. Freedom begins with decisions, and I made mine. Open fields are a bedroom in their apartment. I soar on wings only to the ceiling. One room, four walls and a roof. Doesn’t seem too much for one man.

I did not sleep like a warrior. No nerve endings honed to the slightest signal. The books can keep their tension, the movies their climaxes. Their thoughts succumbed while they ate dinner. The conspiracy was brief. The surrender was unconditional. Mother’s idea for Father’s brawn. Smash through the door. There was nothing after that. Restore the sight-lines, restore the contact. Open the door, find the boy. Without the door there is just a boy. Storm the barricades before the sake wears off.

Their mistake: thinking it was still a door. It did not open any more. Did not swing to and fro as ordered. Was no longer a slave to the numbers. Now it has a new identity. A wall reducing their world by a room. My room. Walls are built for a reason. They don’t turn over secrets with the handle. They scratched at the door like rats. Too unfit middle-aged rats armed with kitchen utensils. Cheap metal teeth gnawed at the wood. Scarred it but snapped themselves. Father grunted. Mother was urging him on. Not the man he wanted me to be. Not anymore. I could hear them breathing, whispering, grunting. They had not had their evening baths.

I slid off my futon in practiced silence. A son rising not from rest but repose. Spreading my weight so very carefully. The dry tatami fibres did not even rustle. I watched myself creep towards the opening. Imagined watching, remembered loathing. Not for them. They couldn’t help it. That was the only way they knew. But I knew more, knew better. The hammer still cocked in my shaking fist. Knowing that I shouldn’t couldn’t wouldn’t do it. The last chance to stop the deluge. No higher ground in sight. And so the floodgates opened. They never stood a chance.

So much noise as they fought the door. The nails refusing to abandon the wooden frame. If only they had stopped for a second. They must have heard me. But madness swallows and occupies every thought. They were trapped in the frenzy. Panicked that they had to act quickly. Before anyone else heard. Not so much me but the neighbours. Nocturnal sounds make the walls seem even thinner. Every noise plants a seed in someone’s mind. Time will only nourish it.

The finest wood a silver coin could buy. Ten inches topped by an imperfect metal form. The nails had pocked the hammer’s ball. Light in my hand but heavy enough. Made by Lee Chen Zhu. Unskilled worker at anonymous factory in Western China. Made one Tuesday morning some time before. One of hundreds he made that day. Thousands made in his lifetime. It had travelled further than I ever have. Just a couple of feet left. Honourable Lee Chen, I salute your handiwork.

I kept low, flexing my fingers. The knuckles could not crack when I descended. I ghosted through the vicious, viscous blackness. Towards the spray of light stealing through the slot. The remnants of a sixty-watt intruder not enough. Began in the kitchen at the hall’s end. A lighthouse warning of the domestic prison within. It should have been a pilot light. But the keepers were blinded by their desires. So my secret stayed safe for then.

I could see their feet. Five-starred passengers in tan leather house slippers. Father’s were bigger, polished, as new. (Only used in the scarce non-work hours.) They pass from room to room to room. Just as he does. Mother’s were smaller; streaked and creased. (The demands of cleaning had extracted their toll.) There were contours around the toes. The leather sank and clung to the crevices. As if imitating the dust.

Father was closer. That’s how I decided, nothing more. No psychological preference or stored resentment. Not at him, just at them. His grunts and the dull clunking of metal. The echoing wood speaking louder than any words. I was not afraid. Fifty-nine steel sentinels were prepared to die for me. I revelled in his frustration. He dug a spike into the gaps. His torment racing around the frame. Hampered by the need for quiet, driven by fear. Not of me but of his reflection. The mirrored image in other’s eyes. Upside-down, back to front, naked and exposed. Nails screaming through the silence and wood. He was winning for a while.

My soldiers fell, sacrificing themselves for me. Slow metal rain diving on the divine wind. Bouncing like empty shell-casings on the matting floor. His attempts at subterfuge were futile. The wood protested every attack. Splinters bemoaning their separation from security. Condemning their assailant as they died. Enough.

I gripped the handle tightly. I had to save my bastion. History teaches us this much. Matsumoto-jo, the white egret castle. Winged rooftops soaring above the low cast plains. Fragile flakes of snow settling on battlements. Melting and dying at the faintest touch. I swung my arm horizontally through the gap. Rolling the wrist as the elbow extended. Smash the hammer down. Coursing into the tan leather covering his foot. The metal had not been sharpened for days. My one neglect. No matter. Enough force to stab down and through. Shoe and skin both ruptured. Steel marauding through thin bones above the toes. Hammer withdrawn in an instant, with impunity. Father screamed, roaring with pain and rage. Stoppered only by Mother, mindful of inquisitive neighbours. Those dangerously curious neighbours. She gagged him with a kitchen towel. I don’t know where she found the strength. Fear makes animals of us all sometimes.

I hadn’t said a word. He had just exploded with angry noise. No syllables. None of us had said anything then. Speaking terms no longer. The hammer was still in my hand. Twin prongs sullen and glistening. I watched his feet recede down the passage. The soundtrack: muffled whimpers of agony. Right foot still warm inside its slipper. Left foot hot with streaming blood. The discarded slipper halfway to the kitchen door. Lying stunned two mat-lengths away. Resting where the wall meets the floor. A wounded corpse seeping vital fluids. The forgotten reminder of defeat.

Some things can be well-hidden deep within. Can burn brightly behind the private honne face. The emotionless tatemae is presented to the world. Open eyes devoid of all meaning.

Later, I lay on the floor. A pillow cradling my head. Watching her sideways. Seeing only half of her crouching. She scrubbed and cursed herself. The water carried the blood ever deeper. Into the crevices and fault lines that had resisted a thousand soles before her. Each crimson toe-print condemned her and Father. In my heart I cheered her failure. Linger long the reminders of her treachery. But no joy there, not in that victory. We were both prisoners in our own ways.

I saw her kneel before me. Mother before the son. The servant before the king of nothing. From my horizontal throne I can’t see her face, see only her thin calves and slender toes curling inwards after years of too-tight shoes. I want to see her eyes, the softness becoming sadness in dark brown pupils below immaculately plucked eyebrows. Her secret when I was a child was producing so much warmth from such a cold face. Back then I needed her smile, that bright arc of approval below her near-flat nose. High cheekbones and thin cheeks, she never abandoned her quiet self-starvation even after landing her trophy husband. She only ate for me when she was pregnant, and stopped as soon as I was born. Washing the dishes alone each night, whisking them away from the table as soon as Father finished. He never realised that it wasn’t done out of deference to him but rather to stop him seeing how little she had eaten. He wouldn’t notice something like that, not like I could before I grew taller than the table. I think she has shrunk as I have grown, millimetres planed from her face by time and worry and loneliness. Since I have withdrawn the first grey hairs have appeared in her shoulder-length hair, tucked away behind her ears with the black ones whenever she applies herself to something. The attrition is cutting deeper, biting through her flesh as thin lines of aging, snaking across her forehead no matter how much cream she applies every night. She doesn’t know that they are burrowing through her receptors, destroying them one by one, losing a little empathy with each. I forget how well she knows me.

She heard me smiling. Perhaps even smelt my scorn. Not all her receptors are gone, not yet. Her eyes kept flicking towards the slot. Seeking the morass of hair and grime. Around my eyes, my ears, my face. There was no way through that armour. Not for her. She looked back again and again. Hopelessly checking a letterbox no postman would visit. Unwilling to believe there was no hope left. It is not a Japanese idea. You must earn your hope here. The vultures circled above her. She scrubbed her fingers raw. Vultures of doubt waiting for the first sign. The postman never came again.

She did her best. At least with the stains. Five red toe-marks of each step. Blurred into an arc of pink. A melting triangle that was once a soleprint. Three hours and fourteen minutes. Sinking ever deeper into the fibres. Every fading hue encouraged her. She couldn’t understand that they would never disappear. Not from the mats, not from memory.

Six months on. The pink became brown became black. Spreading and fading but never leaving. A souvenir of that night. A footprint too big for Japan. She couldn’t replace the panels. Not in this city of a million eyes. Only one needs to half ask a question. Her shame will be revealed. Reminders of failure are better than public knowledge. I know she thinks this. So too I know our neighbours think nothing. Especially Hayashi-san, who never thinks about anything. Only short-skirted schoolgirls and other people’s songs. I know this because they wash every day. They are clean and defenceless. They make it easier for me to know.

HUGS

Harajuku Station Plaza, Jan 2008

ANOYMOUSE

The glowing screen flickers in the corner; the flat line pulses once again. Another message from him, the only one who sees the truth and isn’t afraid to speak it. Hiding behind an avatar; the mouse with no identity. A shivering anime rodent with a pixellated face. One message a month, no replies and no repeats. I don’t know how he found me. His address is blocked, encrypted, hidden. He could be sending to millions, or maybe it’s just me. Compulsory reading for the interactionally challenged, full of the knowledge that keeps us in place.

The Squeak - AnonyMouse joins the dots you can’t see.
No.17

"Take it or leave it: my cheese, your choice. The choicest selections from the popular press, assembled in one, easily digestible portion for your convenience.
This month’s topic is SEX. You know what it is, dream how it happens, and can’t wait for the day when you get to try it with someone else for a change. Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t you? Read on for further clues.

Japanese women don’t want you. Classes on how to appear more desirable for Western men are popular. Why buy local? Short and sweet no match for fun and hung.
Our women would rather blow homeless men wallowing in their own filth. Happens in Nagoya under the blue plastic. Anonymous head in the dark parks. She might need a shower after but she she’ll never have to cook him dinner.

How old are you? Sex is only for kids these days. If you’re married, forget it, the numbers don’t lie: married-over-forty-fifty percent getting-sex less than once a month. All the responsibilities and few of the privileges. Stay at home, don’t make one.

If you can’t fuck it, fake it. Members of men’s group in Shimokitazawa compete to be crowned ‘Air Sex Champion’. Just like Air Guitar: no strings. The winner goes home alone.

You deserve the pain of separation. Maybe you even want it. Tamakeri porn is making a comeback in the popularity stakes. Men lining up to get naked and kicked in the balls. Understanding this one a tough nut to crack. If you can’t join with them, get them to beat you instead.

Young men don’t have balls anyway. Mail order underwear without a front opening popular for tweens, teens and twixters. Sitting down before yellow and brown is the new black. No sideways glances to scare you off.

Emasculated Japanese men let their fingers do the walking in the search for titillation. The Chikan Tomo-no-Kai (The Gropers’ Fellowship) has been formally established so that those who delight in groping women on trains can compare techniques and experiences. What’s the collective noun? A handful? We need to get a grip, on ourselves – not on others.

Internet dating – enjo kosai. Meeting teens on deai-kai (encounter websites), premium prices for private school uniformed princcess. Seducing schoolgirls for sex-earned salaries. Shoes and scarves result. Chanel and Prada, the very thought makes me harder.

No body knows what to do or how to do it right. One in five pregnancies is aborted. Too young, too poor, too unwilling, too many exams. Hard to accessorie with a baby in tow. Bunshu-in temple in Ginza is where you can go. Pray for its soul with a thousand others with regrets. Make a reservation or you won’t get in. 340,000 souls a year means a lot of prayers.

No baby, no woman? Get a doll. Life-size, fun-size ‘Dutch Wives’. All the realistic features and none of the complications or criticism. Business is booming at selected outlets, just make sure yours isn’t an ex-rental model, because you’ll never know where’s she been or been done.

The gay rent-boys in Shinjuku are stealing your women with their superior conversation skills and pleasant company. Forget about the sex though. How bad must things be for breeding females to prefer the company of gay hookers over arrogant behaviour and misogynist values of straight men? Time for a long hard look at yourself boys.

Maybe the eggheads have it! A doctor claims that the size and shape of a woman’s breasts determine her character and personality. So more breasts equals more personality? But when a counsellor starts promoting a ring-tone that increases the bust-size of listeners, it is downloaded an unprecedented ten thousand times during its first week on sale. Perhaps women don’t have personality to begin with? Of course not. You just find them more interesting when they have twin head-rests on their chests.

No man about the house means lonely wives and sad domestic lives. Step forward the ‘sex volunteers’! Not for cash, just a kind-hearted public service involving drought-breaking in-home servicing. He can keep his hostess bars, long hours and expense accounts. There is always time to play during the day.

Mother fixation #1. The rumours have been around for years. Keeping it in the family means more time for junior to study for his exams without worrying about young floozies elsewhere. Mothers and sons? That’s one you won’t be sharing with your friends.

Mother fixation #2. Working men are advertising for surrogate ‘mummies’ to hire. They miss that maternal touch and will pay for the privilege. They want their meals cooked, company in bed, and even their ears cleaned. Just like mothers used to do. Empty nesters miss their own kids. Everyone is happy.

New word for the year: Nonai kanojo – ‘brain-inside girlfriend’ – your fantasy girl – a virtual partner who doesn’t actually exist. The ultimate in safe sex.

You may never break your drought. Hers broke long ago while you were watching hentai. Hymen restoration clinic hasn’t made amends for twenty years. No-one values chastity anymore. No chance of getting even when you can’t even get.


That’s all for this month, so until next time, keep your hands where I can see them and remember that no fiction can be stranger than this truth."