Summer，Fireworks，and My Corpse

by Otsuichi

  Mindless of the dirt she was getting on her clothes, Midori lowered herself in and reached for the object. Her fingers found their target, and she retrieved it from beneath the steps.

  Pulled from the darkness was a single sandal—a sandal with a flower on top. And Midori knew whose it was.

  A shadow seemed to pass over her narrowed eyes, and behind them flashed a flicker of foresight. As she gazed in the direction of the Tachibanas’ house, a wrinkle of doubt formed between her perfectly shaped eyebrows.

  She returned the sandal to Six-Six’s cache and left. She headed, not for the Tachibanas’, but for her own home.

  The day is over, anyway, Midori thought to herself as she walked across the shrine grounds. I’ll visit the Tachibanas tomorrow. Oh, and didn’t I leave some new trial flavors of our ice cream back in my freezer? I should just spend the afternoon eating that and watching talk shows. The serial kidnapping can wait for later.

  Walking along under the summer sun, she could feel the heat of the gravel through the soles of her shoes.

  *

  Night fell, and the raucous singing of the cicadas faded into silence, and the countryside, bathed in the pale light of the moon and the stars, fell into slumber.

  The concrete tile above where I lay was lifted up by Ken’s hand. Beside him stood Yayoi, who nervously looked at my corpse.

  The search party was coming back the next day, and that clever cop might find me. Ken had recognized that the time had come for me to be moved.

  That evening, he had been led back to the two police cars and received treatment for his nosebleed. A large gash ran across his nose where he had bashed it with the rock. He was then asked his name and where he lived. The officers had known that Ken and Yayoi were the last two people to see me before my disappearance, and when Ken admitted his name, they had a lot of questions for the two children.

  “Did you see anyone suspicious?” Ken could answer that one honestly. “No, I didn’t,” he replied. Yayoi had thought it might be possible to make up something, anything, to make the police think my disappearance was connected with the serial kidnappings, but she stuck to her brother’s answers. The safest thing to do, Ken had reasoned intuitively, would be to avoid telling many lies, and only cover up what they absolutely had to. Create too many lies, and they could start to contradict themselves.

  Standing in the beam of Yayoi’s flashlight, Ken lifted me in his arms and carried me out of the ditch. He had a large bandage right in the middle of his face.

  “I’m scared, I’m scared,” Yayoi said softly, again and again, as she turned her head to look in every direction.

  When Ken had woken up in the middle of the night, Yayoi, who had been snuggled up next to him, woke with him. Ken had instructed her to stay in their room, but she was far more afraid of being left alone without him than she was of entering the forest at night. The two children slipped out from under the mosquito netting and tiptoed carefully along the old squeaky floorboards of the hallway. Taking care not to awaken any of their family, they gathered up the tools they’d need.

  Ken laid my body, colder than the chilly night air, to rest upon a rush mat that had been spread out on the ground, and straightened out my haphazardly twisted limbs. If I had been standing, I would have been at attention.

  “It looks like we might have cut the matting a little too short,” Ken said with a dry chuckle intended to calm Yayoi.

  He wrapped me in the matting so that Yayoi could help carry it when he started to tire. It must have been difficult for Ken to carry me the day before. Or maybe he’d just had enough of my dangling, lifeless limbs.

  Ken had salvaged a discarded rush mat, and before leaving the house, he had used a pair of sewing scissors to trim the matting to match my height. Only he had misjudged the size, cutting it short, and now my toes poked out from one end and my hair spilled out the other.

  He then tied up the bundle tightly with string so that it wouldn’t fall open as he carried me.

  When they were leaving the house, Yayoi had been unable to find any string and was in a panic. Their mother always saved the wrappings and string from when she went shopping, saying that they’d come in handy one day. But the children didn’t know where she stored it all. They obviously couldn’t wake up their mother and ask her, and the string, though needed at long last, would have to remain unused. Instead, they took the cord that hung down from their bedroom light. Ken and Yayoi would just have to stand up when they wanted to turn their light off.

  Ken slid the concrete tile back into place and hoisted me over his shoulder like a piece of timber.

  “Brother, where are we taking Satsuki?” Yayoi asked, afraid of what the answer might be.

  Ken, walking back toward their house, answered, “To our room. From what I saw watching the search party today, I think that’s the safest place now.”

  I was rolled up neatly into the matting, my limbs cooperating and not hanging down.

  “We’ll hide her in the closet,” he explained, “and we’ll keep watch in there all afternoon. But we won’t be able to keep her in there forever. So we’ll have to find another hiding place, and fast.”

  Yayoi kept the flashlight pointed downward, lighting the path in front of her brother. His face, barely visible at the edge of the light, was awash in excitement.

  Ken and Yayoi brought me into their room and placed my body in the closet. They closed me inside there—Ken, as if hiding a valuable treasure, just a naughty child pulling a prank, and Yayoi, as if to hide away her terror and her unease, to keep her sin far from God’s eyes.

  The paper door of the closet slid silently shut.

  DAY THREE

  Ken and Yayoi were not prepared for what they saw when they returned home from the morning exercise class. Not only was their mother preparing breakfast, but she was also getting everything ready for the kids to go to school.

  “Quit dawdling, you two,” she scolded them, setting their breakfast on the dining table. “You know there’s school today.”

  They had completely forgotten.

  The summer morning sun was glaring down, and the world outside the window was blindingly bright.

  Ken dropped his rice into his soup, miso with seaweed and onions. “Mother,” he asked, “where are you going?”

  She was headed for their bedroom.

  “I’m putting away your futons. And the mosquito net. You two aren’t tall enough to bring the net down from the ceiling hooks.”

  Yayoi looked at Ken, frightened. Their futons were always stored away in their closet, where I had been hidden. If their mother opened the closet door, she’d discover what they had done. Yayoi’s worry showed on her face.

  But Ken remained calm. He answered coolly, “Don’t worry about it, Yayoi and I will do it. It’ll build character, right? So just eat your breakfast and let us take care of it.”

  “That’s awfully grown-up, coming from you,” his mother replied skeptically, but she was clearly happy to have one less chore to do. She walked into the kitchen.

  Ken and Yayoi shoveled down their food and went back to their room.

  “Brother, what are we going to do? She could come in here while we’re at school!”

  Yayoi was on the verge of tears. Ken had climbed onto a chair and was deftly detaching the blue mosquito netting from the corners of the room.

  “We’ll be fine, Yayoi.” He smiled at his sister reassuringly. “If we fold up the futon mattresses and stack them on top of Satsuki, Mom won’t notice anything.”

  Ken folded the mosquito net into a small bundle and placed it in the closet. The closet was divided into two sections, top and bottom. My body lay in the upper level, where their futons were usually stored. The netting was on top of me.

  In the bottom section of the closet, there were old floor cushions, winter clothes, an outdated vacuum cleaner, and so on.

  “But, but . . .” Yayoi protested.

  “We’ll be fine.” Ken’s smile had a funny way of be
ing reassuring, even when no proof was there to back the words.

  Yayoi wiped away her welled-up tears. She folded the yellow towelket, a gift from Midori, that she wrapped herself in every night.

  Ken folded up the two futons and carried them to the closet. Lately, Yayoi had been sleeping next to Ken, but they were still in the habit of setting both of them out.

  One futon was piled on top of me and then the other. I felt the oppressive weight pressing down on my body. Had I still been alive, in this hot, humid weather, it would have felt so awful that I would have died.

  “Darn,” Ken said. “Her feet are showing.”

  The futon didn’t quite cover my feet. And neither did the rush mat, which had been cut too short. My feet—one wearing a sandal, the other barefoot—were plainly visible. I felt self-conscious under their stares. Had I been alive, I would have blushed.

  “Here, use this, Brother.” Yayoi held out her yellow towelket.

  Ken took it from her and placed it over my feet. He stepped back and looked at the closet, making sure I was completely hidden. “Perfect,” he said, happy with their work. Seeing Ken’s satisfaction, Yayoi felt glad too. Her face flushed a little.

  The two children took one last look, making absolutely sure that no part of my body was visible, and then slid the paper door shut.

  They filled their backpacks, unused for over a week, with their notebooks and finished homework.

  “School only goes through the morning today,” Ken reassured his sister, packing the last few things for school. “So there’s really little chance that anyone will find Satsuki.”

  They walked out the front door together, the voices of the cicadas already chirping around them. The brilliant green rice fields, still dry, basked in the warmth of the sunlight. The arms of the trees seemed to reach up, grasping at the clear blue sky.

  Upon everything but me, morning came, and everyone but me was alive.

  *

  Our grade school had only one class for each grade, so Yayoi and I, being the same age, were in the same class. It was time for the morning homeroom.

  “Teacher, Satsuki isn’t here yet,” the girl in the seat across the aisle from my empty desk reported to our teacher. I had been missing for only three days, and none of my classmates knew about it. Well, none of them except for one.

  Yayoi paled and began to tremble. She strained not to look at the girl who spoke or at my empty seat.

  The teacher hesitated, then replied, “Satsuki is . . . home sick with a cold.” She faked a smile. “Take care not to get sick now, all of you.” She must have heard from my mother.

  The class replied cheerfully in unison, “Yes, Teacher.” The children’s beaming faces were full of brightness, as if the future had been promised to them—and if it hadn’t, you’d want to promise it.

  “Brother . . .” Yayoi softly cried out to herself, quiet enough so that no one would hear. She shrank down into her chair, and her legs were shaking. She thought that maybe if she just said “Brother,” he’d come to save her.

  His words replayed in her head. We’ll be fine. Nobody will find her. Nobody but us knows. She stared down at the scribbles scratched into the surface of her wooden desk until her racing heart calmed down.

  Patience, she thought to herself. It’s only one morning. Then she noticed that the teacher was staring at her.

  And walking slowly toward her.

  What did I do? Did she notice me? She certainly had been shaking enough to be noticed.

  Yayoi’s heart started thumping in alarm. She began to sweat all over.

  The teacher stopped next to her desk. A hand reached down to her tiny shoulder.

  She wanted to run. She wanted to run straight to Ken’s classroom.

  She must have figured it out! She’ll capture me and take me to the police! Yayoi couldn’t banish the thoughts from her mind.

  The teacher put her mouth to Yayoi’s ear and whispered so that none of her classmates could hear.

  “You know that Satsuki is missing. How hard this must be for you, being her best friend.” The teacher’s face was filled with pity. “But please, don’t tell any of your friends. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Yayoi’s head snapped up to look at her teacher. It took a moment for the girl to grasp the meaning of her words, but when she did, she nodded furiously.

  “Yayoi . . .” The teacher grasped Yayoi’s hands consolingly and then left the classroom before she drew the attention of the rest of the class. It was time for the short break between the first and second hour.

  To Yayoi, her classmates seemed to rush around her, dancing and spinning.

  And she realized, to her relief, that she was saved.

  A cool breeze drifted into the classroom, and I could sense all her sweat being carried away.

  *

  “We’re home,” Yayoi called out as she walked through the front door. Ken followed her in.

  After the scare in first period, the rest of the morning passed uneventfully. Yayoi’s class was let out early, but she gloomily waited a half hour or so for Ken to get out so they could walk home together.

  “Mom, where are you?” Yayoi asked. “I’m hungry!”

  Hearing no response, the two children went to their room.“Mom!” Yayoi cried sharply.

  Their mother was inside their room. She had opened the door to their closet and was searching around for something inside.

  Ken casually asked, “Mother, what are you doing?”

  She was digging around in the closet, taking things out and putting them back in, not from the upper section where I was hidden, but rather from the bottom level. But the futons and towelket had been nudged aside a bit, and my hair and toes were just barely visible.

  “My vacuum machine is acting up,” she answered. “And just as I was thinking I’d clean your room for you. I was going to drag out that old one I had. I know I put it in here somewhere.”

  “You don’t have to, we’ll clean our own room,” Ken said. “Why don’t you go watch that show you like. You know, Laugh On? Right, Yayoi?”

  Yayoi looked at her mother with wide, surprised eyes and nodded rapidly.

  “You will?” Mrs. Tachibana closed the paper door, stood up, said, “Well, that would be nice of you,” and left.

  Yayoi, realizing that she had been holding her breath, let out a sigh of relief. Ken set his backpack down unceremoniously on his desk.

  Yayoi opened her mouth to ask where they’d hide my body next. “So, Brother, what—”

  Their bedroom door slid open, and their mother’s face peered through the crack.

  Yayoi’s mouth was frozen open, but Ken asked, “Did you need something else, Mother?”

  “I forgot to tell you. Your lunch is ready, so come and get it. You can clean later.”

  “Yes, fine.” Ken’s brusque answer must have been enough for her, and she shut the door.

  Yayoi unfroze and exclaimed, “That was scary!”

  Again the door slid open, and again through the crack popped the face of the persistent Mrs. Tachibana.

  “What was scary?” asked the face.

  Yayoi whipped around to look at the door and froze again, once more on the verge of tears.

  “Well,” their mother said, “I don’t mean to bother you.”

  “Mother, what is it?” asked Ken. “You’re being a pest.”

  “Well, I don’t know what you mean by that. But you’ve been an awfully good boy lately, Ken. Putting away your futon and doing your cleaning, you’re like a kid on an after-school special.”

  Ken curiously tilted his head to the side. “Now I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve been getting along very well with your sister. It’s like you two are hiding something from me. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  The door closed. Ken strained his ears, listening to their mother’s footsteps walk down the hallway.

  Fearful, Yayoi asked, “Is she gone?”

 
Ken nodded, then turned to Yayoi and smiled.

  Their mother’s last words still on their minds, the two children opened the closet door to make sure I hadn’t escaped.

  *

  Ken and Yayoi finished their lunch and went back to their room to discuss their next move.

  “Brother, what are we going to do?” Yayoi, barely holding back her tears, sounded distressed. “I don’t think we can leave her here any longer . . .”

  But Ken already had a solution. Wearing a self-assured expression, he replied, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe you’ve had the same thought too, even if you weren’t quite aware of it.” He shrugged. “We could just throw her down the hole in the stone foundation at the shrine. No one would ever find her. And then everyone will think that she was just another victim of the serial kidnapper.”

  Yayoi nodded in agreement.

  One of the stones on top of that old foundation on the edge of the shrine grounds had fallen loose, revealing a pit shaped like a well. The boys used it like a trash can, throwing away candy wrappers and empty bags. And Ken meant to dump me in there with the rest of the garbage.

  We should have thrown her in there from the start, they were thinking.

  “Okay,” Yayoi said. “But when are we going to carry her there?”

  “That’s a good question. We should do it as soon as possible. We don’t know when she’s going to start to stink in this heat.”

  Yayoi, picturing my body rotting and smelling, scrunched up her face in disgust.

  In just a number of hours, it would be two full days since I had died.

  “We’ll do it tonight,” Ken stated. “Tomorrow is the fireworks show, right? I bet there’ll be a lot of people around there tomorrow night.”

  The festival, even as small-scale as it was, was attended by over half of the village.

  Yayoi, finally seeing an end to all this, appeared relieved. “Sounds good to me, Brother. We’d better go to sleep early. A nap would be good too.”