by Otaro Maijo
Which is what must have happened with Asura, more or less. Maybe. I don’t really know. But let’s say it did anyway. I prefer to think it did.
So to continue this line of reasoning: Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil, killed those three Yoshiba boys—Shin’ichi, Koji, and Yuzo—and cut them up to try to make a statue of Asura. Though the truth is nobody really knows whether he killed them because he wanted to make an Asura or whether the idea of making the statue occurred to him only after he’d killed them. Three heads and six arms—Koyama’s Asura had the same extra parts. So were Hideo Ozaki and Yoshitaka Koyama feeling the same kinds of feelings when they set out to make their statues?
In a basic sense, they were—or at least something pretty similar. Ozaki even started calling the statue he wanted to make “Asura Man.” Which is why, in the moment before he died, after he had jumped from the roof of that apartment house, in the instant it took him to fall seven stories, there was absolutely no trace of regret or remorse in his heart—which I know for a fact because we were linked together—and that was because he believed that by trying to make his Asura statue, he had hoped to leave the world a slightly better place. He was convinced his “Asura Man” would have been the real deal—not just a toy superman but the image of God.
At this point, of course, I can’t help thinking about that monster—the one I met in the heart of the forest. He had a lot of faces and arms too. Wasn’t he just another—totally gross—Asura?
But if so, then I guess I was doing just what the Round-and-Round was doing: cutting up those kids to make my own god—and mine was even bigger than his, with more kids and more parts. I do feel pretty bad for those kids, if they’re still there in the forest. But it might make them feel a little better to know that the Round-and-Round was working with totally dead boys. My kids were suffering a lot, but at least they were still alive…Well thanks, Aiko!
I guess you’re right: the difference doesn’t amount to much.
Anyway, you still have to admit that Hideo Ozaki’s basic idea—to make a statue of Asura—was a good one, a good impulse…and the fact that he was trying to do something good means that Ozaki himself had some good in him, even if it was just a little tiny bit. And a person who has some good in him can be said to be a good person, at least in some limited way. So in some limited way, Ozaki was a good person. Even if he was the Round-and-Round Devil.
So I would like to follow the example of my own made-up God and exercise great patience and totally awesome compassion…and forgive the Round-and-Round Devil. I would like to say that I even love him.
And I’d like to do the same for myself—forgive me, love me. Regardless of how stupid and selfish I’ve been, how much I’ve insisted on wasting this precious life, I’ve still got a few good points…though I can’t think of any at the moment. Still, I’m sure I have some—at least one or two. Somewhere. Probably.
But let’s forget about me.
Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil. Pushing thirty, unemployed, living with his parents, spoiled, abusive, hanging out, following V of H—and all the while building up this tremendous stress, this awful pressure. He starts looking around for a way to vent his anger and frustration, and what he sees is the terrible stuff these middle school kids have been doing, these little monstrous kid-killers—Sakakibara and the rest of them. So, half as a joke, he kills a few cats, then a few dogs, and I think you can safely say that it’s just a short step to killing the three boys. Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil…just another bad-boy Asura.
So despite his really, really bad choice of materials, you might say that Ozaki himself became a good Asura when he set out to make one…though you’d be totally lying if you did. But maybe you could at least say that he was taking the very first little baby steps on the road to Asura-hood, or maybe that he had at least discovered there was such a road…or maybe that he’d noticed some vague signs that might have eventually led him to discovering that there was such a road…Anyway, for me anyway, the fact that he wanted to make an Asura is at the very least a sign there was some good somewhere in his heart…
So, though I did hesitate for a while, in the end I told Sayaka Yoshiba why I thought her three boys had been cut to pieces. I told her that Shin’ichi, Koji, and Yuzo had become an Asura.
Now of course I knew this wasn’t going to solve her problem. I knew she wasn’t going to thank me for explaining and tell me it was all right now. No, I knew it was only going to make her even crazier with grief and anger. And I wondered why I’d been brought back to this world if that was the best news I’d learned on the other side. But I also knew that time can heal anything—well, most things anyway—and I had my hopes that the photos of the Koyama Asura that the investigators found in Hideo Ozaki’s apartment might actually help in the long run. He had taken hundreds of them—beautiful, pure pictures of the statue—and part of me hoped that someday, if only in a small, provisional way, they might give just a little comfort to Mrs. Yoshiba’s suffering soul.
The death of her children remained completely incompre-hensible—nothing would ever change that—but maybe there was some peace to be had in figuring out one small part of the puzzle.
Eiganji was not far from the Yoshiba home, and Sayaka started going there almost every day. She would sit in front of the image of Asura and stare at it for a long time. At first she just wept bitterly, sometimes talking to it or even screaming. But as the days passed she seemed to grow calmer, the tears less frequent.
Yoji Kaneda was usually there too.
On the night of the Armageddon, as he was heading back to the station from my house, Yoji had found Mrs. Yoshiba, still on that bench in the park. Her husband had left her and gone home, and she was just sitting there, staring off into space. He had tried to talk to her, and then he had taken her home, but when they got there they found that her husband was already dead. I guess all hell broke loose at that point, but that was also the moment Yoji got my frantic, selfish phone call. So he had run out, right in the middle of Armageddon and the confusion at the Yoshibas’, to come back to my house—and there he had found me, more or less half dead, my head split open by Maki Saito’s hammer. Poor Yoji—too many surprises!
So he’d taken me to the hospital and stayed with me until I was in intensive care. I was in pretty bad shape, but I guess he knew he couldn’t really do anything more for me, so he decided to go where he could do some good: back to a mother who had lost her three children…and now her husband. She would need help with the wake and the funeral, and so he had gone back to her—which is how Sayaka Yoshiba took Yoji away from me.
Sometimes I show up at Eiganji too, along with Tansetsu Sakurazuki. He usually brings a bag packed with cups and two thermoses of tea—one has hot hojicha and the other, cold green tea. He roasts the hojicha himself, and the green tea is some special blend. They’re both pretty tasty. And he makes these awesome cakes too. Today, it was bean dumplings—soft little mochi filled with yummy bean jam. Jam and mochi both homemade. I told him that if fortune-telling doesn’t pan out, he could always open a sweet shop. But he said he was doing just fine, thank you very much.
You go through the gate at Eiganji and straight ahead until you reach the main hall. Inside, just to the right of the big Buddha, is Yoshitaka Koyama’s Asura. There, in front of it, on cushions set on top of these thin grass mats, which are themselves spread right on the cold earth floor, are Sayaka Yoshiba and my idiot friend Yoji. You can tell right away that the bond between them is really powerful—even if it’s not very old—and I have to admit that’s pretty hard for me to take. I mean I am still recovering from being half dead—and having a broken heart. So seeing them together makes me kind of queasy. Though I know there’s nothing to be done about it. I’m hardly the first girl to have loved and lost.
And I guess the truth is, these days, I’m pretty far from being “pretty fucking far from okay.” If that’s not too complica
ted. What I mean is, my troubles now don’t compare to the ones the girls had in Caged Fury.
You can’t give up and die over a little thing like being dumped by Yoji. You know that now, Aiko.
When Tansetsu and I show up at Eiganji, Mrs. Yoshiba smiles and gets up to greet us. She’s so calm and gentle that you could never imagine she’s the same woman I’d seen crying her eyes out and fucking her husband’s brains out on that park bench. She’s totally beautiful too. Scary beautiful.
Oh well.
That’s just the way it is. I don’t have to like it, but that doesn’t change anything. So be it.
Yoji takes a breath and gets right up with Sayaka—which makes me want to actually puke.
Remain calm, Aiko.
Cicadas are crying in the trees around the temple. Tansetsu gives us each a cup and pours the hojicha. It hurts my throat to drink hot tea on a hot day, but then he pours the green tea, and I realize the contrast makes the cool tea taste unbelievably delicious. I also realize we’ve still got the mochi cakes. They’re slightly sweet and have this amazing spongy texture. I could eat the whole plate of them, but Tansetsu gives us just one each. Maybe he thinks good things come in small packages, or small servings, or something like that. But they are sooooo delicious, I wish he’d let me have more! I’m still a growing girl. But it’s one-to-a-customer, so I might as well give up. I’ll ask for more tea instead.
When we’re done with our snack, I realize that the Buddha and the Asura and the shadows haven’t calmed me down much—in fact, the vibes I’m getting from Yoji and Mrs. Yoshiba have had just the opposite effect. So I decide to go for a walk around the temple. Tansetsu gathers up his teacups and thermoses and follows me out of the hall.
We head for the cemetery. There are long rows of tombs with just a few trees planted between them, and the sun is intense. Afraid I might get sunburned, I try to hide in Tansetsu’s shadow. I think I’m being pretty subtle about it, but he probably knows what I’m up to—he’s a mind-reader, after all. It seems he recently started studying to be a weather forecaster as well, and now he’s telling me all about the wind and the clouds and the air pressure. Usually, nothing could bore me more, but I end up listening in spite of myself. He’s so intense when he gets going about this stuff that I almost find it interesting. There must be something to it if he can keep yakking on forever like that. But finally I decide I was right in the first place: there’s not much interesting about wind and clouds and air pressure. Nothing at all, in fact. But far more interesting than what he’s saying, for me, is the way he says it—the way he tucks his hair behind his ears…just like that teacher on TV, Kinpachi or whatever he was called. In fact, everything about him reminds me of some goofy TV character—except Tansetsu is even funnier! I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed the way he makes me laugh.
“How’s work going?” I ask. I know he’s older than me—ten years older, in fact—but somehow I want to sound like we’re equals. Plus, he doesn’t look his age—nothing like it. I wonder how old he does look, and then I realize he doesn’t look any age in particular. There’s really no way to tell.
By “work” I mean the jobs he gets using his psychic powers to contact dead people. Sayaka had hired him because she really wanted to talk to her boys.
But when I bring up his “work,” he frowns.
He hadn’t had any luck contacting the little boys, he explains. They were hardly old enough to talk when they died, so when he tried calling them from this side, they probably didn’t understand—or maybe they were too little to even go to the place where other dead people go. He was still looking for a way to reach them.
He didn’t mention it, but I knew he might also be having a cash-flow problem. He had pretty much given up his fortune-telling business for the time being while he was working for Mrs. Yoshiba, and he wouldn’t be paid until he got results. It occurred to me that Sano’s family would probably have been willing to pay him for finding Sano’s body, but I decided not to mention it.
Then, out of the blue—and I’m not sure why—I asked if he had a girlfriend, and he got this creepy grin on his face. “No,” he said, “but I’m open to suggestions.” So I cut things off right there.
Am I ever going to find the right boyfriend? A truly fine boyfriend?
I remember those cliffs. The second time around, after I got away from the Round-and-Round and was swimming upstream in the River Styx with all those other souls, ready to go over to the other side. But then up there, written in solid rock on the world-of-the-living-side cliff, was a message for me.
I decided to ignore it and go on, but then I heard this really loud voice.
“Hey! Aiko!”
And I looked up and there was that weird, age-free Tansetsu Sakurazuki, waving to me from the top of the cliff. Grinning for all he was worth. As though he was really, really happy to see me. And it was the kindness in that smile that brought me back to this side. Or sometimes I think about the first time I was there, between life and death, the way he reached out and grabbed my collar—the look on his face, the feel of his hand. In fact, I think about it a lot. All the time, in fact.
He had this really firm grip, but there was something reassuring about it at the same time. And his face had a lot of “character”—a little weird, but in a nice way.
Shit, shit, shit!
Now part of me was even thinking it might be nice to do it with this totally weird guy. But the thing is—I like them cute. Or at least somewhat normal looking…like Yoji. Yoji!
And I’ve given that up, haven’t I? Never again will I do it with somebody I don’t like. Didn’t I promise myself that?
The next time it’s going to be with someone I’m crazy about. Someone who’s crazy about me, who’ll treat me right and take care of me. Someone who’d fight tooth and nail to protect me. Someone I care about, someone I love more than anyone else, someone I’d fight tooth and nail to protect. Somebody who’d stop my heart with one look—and who would then come running to jump-start it again!
If I could find somebody like that, it would be love at first sight. I’d fall totally in love with every inch of him. Not some part of him, or something about him, or in some certain way, but in every way, with every bit of him, the very core, the very essence of him. My heart’s jump-starter would have the kind of face that would pop into my head the minute I started thinking about love…
Hold on a second.
What is Tansetsu’s face doing popping into my head? Must be some kind of mistake. Maybe I just feel grateful to him for bringing me back from the land of the dead—maybe that’s why I spend so much time thinking about his geeky face. And it is totally geeky—the long, straight hair down over the ears, that dopey look—but maybe the popping is natural enough if you factor in the minor detail that he saved my life.
It couldn’t be love, could it?
And then there was still Sano.
He’s probably still out there, dead somewhere. I finally mentioned him to Tansetsu, and he got in touch with Sano’s family. They hired him to try to find the body. Hmm. I guess when I think about it now, I realize that Sano was probably a little bit in love with me. Maybe that’s why he was calling to me from the other side. And maybe everybody kept telling me I should sleep with him because they knew how he felt about me. Maybe Kan…well, who knows?
Anyway, if you really were in love with me, then I’m sorry. Forgive me, Sano. But I really didn’t like you. And don’t call me anymore. Don’t come around inviting me to join you on the other side. I’ve decided I’m going to go on living here in this world, just as I am, and I’ll find someone other than you…someone I really like doing it with.
Though I have no idea who it’s going to be.
So I think I’ll tell Tansetsu not to look for you. I guess you still kind of give me the creeps.
Still, it’s pretty incredible to think that you
could love somebody so much you’d call to them from beyond death, try to get them to join you on the other side. But if you ask me, it would have made more sense for him to try to get me to bring him back to the land of the living, to jump-start his heart.
“What?”
Early summer. I’m walking with Tansetsu on the jogging path by the Nogawa River, thinking about everything and nothing, glancing over at him from time to time, when I suddenly realize he’s been talking to me.
“You know, Aiko,” he had said, “you really should read more, and not just crappy manga. Books broaden your horizons. And TV and movies too. Try something new, learn about the world. You should start reading the newspaper, stop spending so much time on those worthless websites. Get out and have fun, meet new people.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I said.
“What I’m trying to say is…I was there at the river, in your inner world, and I saw all that stuff in your imagination—and I hate to say it, but I wasn’t too impressed. It’s a reflection of everything you’ve seen and done—your whole life—and from what I saw, I’d say you could use a little inner-life enrichment.”
