Kappa Quartet

by Daryl Qilin Yam

  “Did he pay the restaurant a second visit?” I asked.

  Takao shook his head. “He only ate there quite recently, about two weeks ago,” he said. “He’s not that keen on nabe either.”

  Junpei sighed and took out his smartphone from the pocket of his jeans. “Fine then,” he said. “I’ll bring up a map of the neighbourhood and we’ll see.”

  He led us straight to the hospital, about thirty seconds away from the school. Junpei continued to look at the screen of his smartphone.

  “There’s no restaurant listed on the map. But I’m sure if we just look around…”

  I turned. There was a small, traditional-looking house, with a tiled rooftop and several cars parked along the front. The house stood conspicuously between two larger buildings, as though it knew it didn’t belong in the scene. Faintly I could hear the sounds of music playing, as well as of cutlery, clattering on table surfaces. People laughed and talked in loud voices.

  “Could that be the place?” I said.

  Takao took a closer look. Hanging outside the door was a white T-shirt. The word Perdido was written on it, scrawled with a black marker. A look of satisfaction spread across Takao’s face.

  “This is it, kids,” he said. “Let’s go in.”

  We slid open the door. The restaurant turned out to be a fairly packed establishment, its size twice as big as the café where I worked. The air was thick and heavy with the smell of nabe and beer—the mood was nothing short of riotous. Seated around the tables were families both big and small, dressed surprisingly in loungewear and slippers; the parents scooped boiled noodles and meat slices for their children, as the younger kids ran about and knocked into things. There was a group of salarymen seated at the back, trading jokes over two large pots, as a phonograph stood by the main doorway, playing music from another era.

  Takao asked for a table for three. A waiter led us to a table, situated beneath a framed poster. Printed on the poster was a black woman, from what seemed like the sixties: she had short and curly hair, and wore a lime green dress. There was a caption printed across her bosom, in red and yellow characters: I search for my heart in Perdido.

  “It’s lively, isn’t it?” I said to Junpei. He didn’t respond.

  Takao took a quick look at the menu, and placed an order with the waiter. The waiter walked away.

  “I thought it’d be quieter,” said Junpei.

  Takao smiled, and hung his baseball jacket over the back of his chair. “Nabe is nice when you have it all to yourself. But it’s even better with friends. It’s a dish that’s meant to be shared.”

  Junpei nodded. The waiter reappeared, with a jug full of stock.

  “Do you ever have nabe with other people?”

  “You mean, like, people apart from the two of you?”

  Junpei nodded again. The waiter poured the stock into the hot pot, and set the remainder aside. The waiter then adjusted the dials on the electric heater.

  “Well, sometimes,” said Takao. “Not too often. I prefer your company a lot more, if I have to be honest.”

  “You mean to say, me and my sister?”

  “Well yeah,” said Takao. “You and your sister both.”

  The waiter went away and came back with an array of ingredients: shiitake and enoki mushrooms, tofu and fresh eggs; there were also a couple of leafy vegetables, as well as some sukiyaki slices of beef and pork. But the broth, still simmering, had yet to be brought to a boil.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” asked Junpei.

  Takao nodded again. “Sure thing, kiddo. But you’ll have to speak up.”

  I watched Junpei as he tried to find the words.

  “Do you have any family in Tokyo?” he asked, his voice a little louder.

  Takao paused.

  “Well, you know I’m originally from Kagoshima. You can tell from my accent,” he said.

  “Does that mean your family’s still there?”

  “Well, my parents are dead, if that’s what you’re poking around for. But I have two other siblings.”

  “And?”

  “They’ve moved on to other places. Just like me.”

  “So they don’t live in Kagoshima anymore?” Junpei asked. Takao shook his head. “And nobody followed you to Tokyo?”

  “None,” said Takao. “Nobody followed me anywhere.” He then picked up the mushrooms and the vegetables, and dumped half of it into the stock. The liquid had just started to boil at that point. “Anyway, enough about me,” said Takao. “Let’s talk about you, Jun. What did you do today?”

  Junpei paused. He told Takao about how he had been reading Chiba Mari’s manuscript ever since he woke that morning.

  “It’s her latest novel,” he said, “about a notebook that a young man purchases at a bookstore. He buys it, thinking that it’s empty. But when he opens it, he realises it’s filled with the diary entries of some other person. The more he reads this diary, the more he realises that it’s about a person who’d run away from home at the age of sixteen, only to find himself unable to return when he wanted to at the age of twenty-five.”

  Takao began to serve us the enoki mushrooms.

  “So does the young man end up trying to find this person?” he asked. “I assume he feels bad about coming across this guy’s diary, or at least curious as to who this person might be.”

  Junpei shook his head. “The diary is only half the story,” he said. “In the other half, the protagonist is too unmotivated and lazy to lead a fulfilling life. But you get this feeling that he wants to murder his neighbour’s dog.”

  “The dog?” said Takao. “Really?”

  Junpei nodded. “Chiba Mari is fascinated with household pets, I realise. She once said in an interview that pets are given this illusion that they’re a part of something, although in reality their lives are mostly governed and led by the choices of others. She thinks their only purpose is to fill up the pockets of space in other people’s lives. There’s a lot of cruelty in that arrangement, according to her point of view.”

  “Well, that’s certainly a unique perspective,” said Takao.

  “It is,” said Junpei. “For example, her fourth novel was a family drama centred on the death of a pet goldfish. It was the kind of goldfish that won many prizes for being really beautiful.”

  “I see,” said Takao. He looked towards me. “You know, this Chiba Mari person—she’s pretty famous, isn’t she?”

  “She’s quite famous, yes,” I said.

  “So how does a sixteen-year-old like Jun get his hands on the manuscript of her latest novel?” he asked. “I imagine you had something to do with that.”

  I smiled at him. “Chiba Mari told me at the café that she was hard at work on something she had never thought of doing before. She wanted a real fan of her work to read it and give her feedback before she showed it to anybody else, and proceeded to ask me about Junpei. She needed somebody both smart and trustworthy—someone who could compare this manuscript with her previous four novels, and who was also loyal enough to be understanding and yet impartial. She asked if my brother fit the bill.”

  “And you said yes?”

  I nodded.

  “And then she gave you her manuscript, just like that,” said Takao. I nodded again.

  “She gave me instructions to pass it on to him, as well her business card in the event either of us wished to contact her. This happened last Thursday, I think.”

  “The thing is, she expects me to finish reading her manuscript by the end of this weekend,” said Junpei. “That’s why I did nothing but that today.”

  “Right,” said Takao. He took the plate of meat, and dropped a few of the slices into the broth. They turned grey in a matter of seconds. “So what do you think, Junpei? Does the protagonist kill the neighbour’s dog in the end?”

  Junpei fished out a slice of beef with his chopsticks. “I’m not entirely sure, to be honest,” he said. He then placed the beef in his mouth.

  Takao looked confused. �
��Why aren’t you sure?” he asked, and Junpei answered after he swallowed.

  “I’m getting the sense that he might kill himself instead,” he said.

  “But why?” asked Takao. “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Junpei. “I’m not done with the manuscript. But I think it’s because he identifies with the dog in some way.”

  “More than he would with the guy in the diary?”

  “I believe so,” said Junpei. “In some way, the fortunes of the diary-writer run contrary to the protagonist’s. The protagonist, whose life revolves around his house and his neighbour’s, remains transfixed in a prison of his own making, whereas the diary-writer travels across the country in a bid to retrace his steps. The writer’s journey to and fro seems almost too exciting to be true, and so the protagonist sees more of himself in the dog next door than in the person he reads about in the diary.”

  Takao grew quiet. He began to gaze at the food before him. I scooped a ladleful of broth and poured it into my own bowl.

  “A penny for your thoughts, old man?” I asked. Takao raised his head and looked towards me. He didn’t say a thing for about a minute or so.

  “Can humans really feel that way, sometimes?” he asked. “Like they’re lost, even when they’re not? Even when they’re at the place where they’re absolutely meant to be?”

  I thought about the question. I then looked at him, still staring at the pot. “I guess so,” I said, and left it at that.

  It was nearly ten o’ clock when the train stopped at Horikiri station. Junpei took down the restaurant’s address, just before we left the place, and passed the details on to Takao. “Now you’ll know your way back to Perdido,” he said. As we walked out of the station, Takao asked if either of us would like to stay for a while, perhaps go on a walk with him. Junpei said he had to go home.

  “Is it the manuscript?” Takao asked, and Junpei said it was. “Are you close to the ending, Jun?”

  “I’m nearly there,” he said. “Just about a quarter left.”

  Takao smiled. “Let me know how it goes, okay?”

  Junpei said he would. He then left. Takao turned towards me.

  “Does the novel have a title, by the way?” he asked, and I shook my head.

  “Chiba Mari’s still deciding, I think. I don’t recall seeing a title on the first page, when I had handed the stack to Junpei.”

  A wind blew towards us. Takao drew his jacket tighter around him, and pulled the zip up even higher.

  “Maybe it’s not meant to have a title at all,” he said. “Maybe that’s been Chiba Mari’s plan from the start.”

  I laughed. “Perhaps,” I said. “We’ll never know.”

  We began to walk: we went back into the station and came out through another exit, climbing up the steps to the side of a long, long road. It seemed to have no end at this time of the night; it stretched, endlessly, towards a point where I couldn’t make out anything anymore. I realised that Takao was taking me to his park—the one beside the river. We stood by the roadside, and waited for a taxi to pass before crossing.

  The park was freshly mowed, with the sight of the Arakawa River before it. Takao and I were the only ones there that night, hugging our knees against the sharp, chilly breeze. Distant were the sounds of the railway and expressway, swirling around and behind us, as though the sounds were drifting on the wind.

  “It’s nice,” Takao said softly, as though he were speaking to himself.

  “It is,” I said. I tried to make out the expression on his face, but it was hard to do so without any light. “Have you ever had company before?” I asked. “Here in this park?”

  “No,” he said. “You’re the first.”

  “I see,” I said. I looked at the expressway on my right, and saw how it made one large curve around the horizon. “I can see why you’re drawn to this place.”

  “You can?” said Takao. “You’re nice. But it’s such a typical thing for a kappa to do. People sometimes mock me for it.”

  “Do they, really?”

  “They do,” he said, with a hint of a smile. “Sometimes I notice people here as well, and then they notice me back: they see a lonely guy at first, seated all by himself, and then they notice the hole in my head. They keep clear of the place, as though they’re trespassing or something. And to think my actual house is right over there,” he added, pointing beyond the expressway. “I can’t help but laugh sometimes, just thinking about it.”

  I thought about what he said. “You know, humans do it too. They like to be around rivers and oceans and seas as much as any other kappa. Think about it,” I said. “I work in a café by the river, and there are quite a number of regulars there. And I’m sure they’re not just there for the coffee. Some come because of the scenery.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Takao. I could feel the weight of his gaze, boring into the side of my face. “I wonder why.”

  I shrugged. “It’s just something we share, I guess. Is that why your family was originally based in Kagoshima? It being by the sea and everything?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We lived near the bay, actually, with Sakurajima rising from the centre.”

  “Sakurajima’s a volcano, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” he said. He then lay down on the grass, and folded his arms behind his head. “In order to support me and my siblings, both of my parents worked at a hotel located on the southern coast of the volcano. And in that hotel was a famous onsen, right at the edge of the sea. Some considered it spiritual, a holy sort of place; men and women both would wear robes and bathe together, and enjoy a direct view of the sea.” He sniffed. “When we were kids, my siblings and I would go there and have fun whenever the hotel guests weren’t expected anymore.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” I said.

  “It was, yeah. But my mother in particular used to tell us scary tales about human beings. According to her, all the humans secretly wanted to eat us; they’d cut us up and boil us in their hot pots whenever the weather got cold.” He paused. “That’s why we could only go to the hotel’s onsen when the humans weren’t around. If they saw us jumping around in the hot water they might feel tempted to snatch us away and eat us.”

  I thought carefully about what to say next; Takao had never spoken so openly about his past before.

  “Is that why you keep eating nabe? So you can be more human?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head. “No matter what I do, I will always remain a kappa.”

  “Then why?” I asked.

  He took in a deep breath, and let out a sigh. It was the kind of sigh you hear at first, and then nothing at all, nothing until it goes away. He said, “I had a feeling that the more I eat nabe, the less afraid of death I will become. But I am never not afraid of death. And I will never stop thinking about dying. I know that now. That’s why I eat nabe all the time, whenever I can afford to.”

  I let out a laugh. “Oh, Takao,” I said. “Does nabe even taste good to you?”

  He laughed as well. “That’s the weirdest bit, kiddo. It’s the best thing in the world, and I can’t get enough of it. I will never be sick of it. I could have it any time of the year.”

  I laid myself down on the grass beside him. I turned on my side so I could continue to watch him. The grass, short and spiky, smelt of fresh dirt and water.

  “Have you ever thought of returning to Kagoshima?” I asked.

  “I have,” he said. “But there’s no reason for me to go back anymore. Both of my parents are dead. All my siblings have moved away. Even the hotel where my parents used to work at is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah,” said Takao. “The hotel management filed for bankruptcy a few days ago, if I remember correctly. It wasn’t making enough money, in spite of its famous onsen. The court just accepted their filings today.”

  “Today?” I repeated.

  “Yes, tod
ay,” he said. “Which means the hotel is probably closed forever.”

  We fell into a short silence. I watched him as he continued to watch the sky above us, the hair of his fringe whipping about in the breeze. I held my own hair down with a hand, to keep it from getting into my eyes.

  “Takao?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you close your eyes for me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Can you imagine something for me?”

  He nodded.

  “I want you to imagine us going to Kagoshima,” I said.

  “Right now?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Right now. Imagine the two of us taking the bullet train down south, across the entire length of the country. How crazy and irresponsible that would be.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Takao. “Really irresponsible.”

  “Imagine the both of us, finding our way to Sakurajima. We’d take a taxi, try to find the hotel where your parents used to work.”

  He smiled.

  “We’d have to board a ferry first,” he said. “The port’s right next to the station.”

  “Fine,” I said. “We go to the port. The ferry comes, and we board it. The ferry stops at Sakurajima.”

  “It must be scary at night,” said Takao.

  “Just a little,” I said, even though I was not afraid of the dark. “A taxi soon arrives. You tell the driver the address of the hotel.”

  Takao scratched the tip of his nose. His eyelids were still shut.

  “He drives us there,” he said. “But the taxi driver doesn’t know the hotel is closed for good.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “The stupid driver doesn’t know anything. He drops us off at the hotel, and we find that the doors are unlocked.”

  Takao laughed. “That’s convenient.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Anyway. We find the lobby, take a look at the signs. The signs point us in all sorts of directions. But we manage to find our way to this onsen of yours—where you and your siblings used to play in as children, when all the guests have gone to sleep.”

  Takao paused. “I take off my clothes,” he said. “You take yours off as well. We put on our bathrobes.” He paused again. “We push through the door and realise we’re outdoors.”