Black Fairy Tale

by Otsuichi

  One night my mother and I were alone in the house. Dad was working late and hadn’t come home yet.

  There was an uneasiness between us. Neither had tried to talk to the other. I didn’t know what to say. I was sure my mother didn’t know either. Even if she did hate me, I wanted to believe that she just didn’t know how to start a conversation with me. Both of us were nervous and didn’t know how to handle it.

  As my mother made dinner I stared at her back—it was as if I were seeing it for the first time since I woke up in the hospital.

  Her back was small. Threads of gray were mixed in her hair. She was wearing a sweater, and she was cutting up carrots with a chop chop chop of the knife.

  That was all there was to the image; it made my heart feel like it would break.

  “Mother . . .” I said to her. She stopped her movements, her shoulders shaking.

  I stood in front of her and looked into her eyes. She turned her head away to avoid looking at me.

  “Hey, Mother . . . You used to love me so much, and that’s why you hate me now—now that I can’t do anything and I don’t have my memory, right?”

  She didn’t answer. That’s fine, I thought.

  “A doctor told me that there was a chance that my memory will come back. He’s an eye doctor, but he knows a lot of people who have recovered from amnesia in a matter of years. He said I might return to my old self.”

  But I want you to listen to me now. Compared to who I used to be, the me now is just some underachiever who can’t do anything. But seeing what I’ve seen I’ve learned to think in my own way.

  When my memory comes back I may not even care about how worried and upset I’ve been over something as trivial as this. But who I am now is everything to me.

  At first I hated myself for being worthless. But not anymore.

  Even if my memory does return, I never want to forget who I am now. I want to always remember how I’m frightened and hurt by the littlest things.

  I love who I am now. And I want you to accept me too.

  “I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to leave again tomorrow. I really am sorry.”

  With that I left my mother and went upstairs to my room.

  Early the next morning, without seeing anyone, I left home.

  *

  I called Sumida from the station and he came to pick me up.

  When I got in the car he said, “You’re back soon.”

  “There are still a few things I need to do here. How’s Saori doing?”

  “She seems kind of down lately,” he confided.

  Sumida told me another fun story about Kazuya that day. I lived for every fresh bit of information about Kazuya I could find.

  We stopped by Sumida’s apartment—a fairly new two-story building not far from the station—before going back to Kaede. He had forgotten to set the recording timer on his DVR. I asked him about the building, and he said it had been built not even a year before. He was a junior at a college roughly a twenty-minute drive from the station. His first two years he had lived a little farther away, but he’d grown tired of the long daily commute and moved to the new apartment just after it had been built.

  I waited in the car while Sumida went to his apartment to set the recording. When he came back, he sat in the driver’s seat and looked up at the windows of the building and said, “Kazuya came over here to hang out all the time.”

  “Really? Did he stay over?”

  “When Saori kicked him out, he did.” He smiled, amused, and then shrugged.

  Careful not to say too much, I said, “I’d love to hear about it.”

  I must have said it in a more serious tone than I’d thought, because he sighed. Then, in the car, with the engine still off, I listened to him talk about times he had spent with Kazuya.

  Kazuya had been a smart boy back when he was in middle school. But in high school, classes had become more difficult and his grades had started to fall. Of course, Sumida hadn’t met him until college—Sumida only knew about all this because Kazuya had told him.

  Kazuya barely made it into college—not the same one as Sumida went to—but by then he’d lost interest in studying.

  “He dropped out and stopped doing anything with himself.”

  For whatever reason, Kazuya hadn’t been in a hurry to make anything of his life. After he stopped going to school he spent every day as if time had stopped, doing whatever he felt like. And by that I don’t mean to imply that he did anything in particular. Rather, when he quit his classes he stopped seeing his friends. Until he met Sumida nobody ever called him; his peers had stopped coming to see him. Alone, he walked Kaede until struck by some thought, such as I should see what the view is from the top of that hill, or I should go climb the jungle gym at my old grade school.

  “He was like a hermit,” Sumida said, deep emotion in his voice.

  When Saori got mad at Kazuya for being lazy and not doing anything with himself, he’d escape to Sumida’s apartment.

  I started to feel giddy.

  In the car on the way to Kaede I could think of nothing but Kazuya. Sumida tried talking to me as he drove, but I only gave half-hearted responses and eventually he gave up, shrugged, and let me be.

  I sat there picturing it—Kazuya walking through Kaede in the summer, when the earth was covered with life. As he walked through grass as tall as he was, Kazuya brushed the leaves with his hand. A bird sat chirping on the edge of the roof of a house and Kazuya drew near, then watched as the bird flew away in alarm. As he walked and watched and felt the wind, he might have almost been having a one-on-one conversation with the world.

  Reflected in the side-view mirror, my left eye stared back at me.

  I loved Kazuya. I had been trying not to think about what kind of feeling it was. It’s just the kind of affection you feel for someone close to you, I told myself. If it’s anything more than that it’ll hurt. He’s dead.

  But not only did I have those feelings for him, I also, oddly enough, thought of him as myself. Sometimes I even wondered if his soul had possessed my empty body. Of course, I only felt that way because I’d taken in so much of what he’d seen. I didn’t think it was a bad thing. But when I tried to think about who I was, I couldn’t find a simple answer.

  Who am I? Without my memories, I’m not Nami. I’m a lot like Kazuya, but I’m not him either.

  Now that I’m back in Kaede, pushing myself to seek vengeance for Kazuya, how long will I be able to remain me?

  Soon we had entered Kaede. It was already dusk—the journey from my house had taken all day.

  Once more I looked at the outside of Melancholy Grove. Inside would be Kimura, the bearlike manager, and behind the counter, that stuffed-up part-timer would be blowing her nose.

  She met me with a smile and said, “Welcome back!”

  I thought I might cry. Even if my memory were to come back, I didn’t want to forget how I felt at that moment.

  “Nami, did you talk with your parents?” Saori asked.

  I answered vaguely, “Yeah, well, a little.”

  “Isn’t school starting up again for you? Is it okay for you to be here?”

  “Hmmmmm . . . It might not be okay, but you don’t have to worry about it.”

  Saori put her elbows on the counter, resting her chin in her hands, and looked at me sharply. “You’re not planning on skipping school, are you?”

  Anxiously I drew my hands to my chest, covering my heart.

  She laughed and said, “You can’t hide anything from me!”

  As we talked the thought that I might disappear became more and more painful.

  No, I’m not going to disappear. I don’t know if my memory is ever coming back, but even if it does, I won’t forget about Saori and the rest of them.

  It’s just . . . when I become Nami again, the deep feelings I now have for them may change. That was my fear.

  After we ate dinner at her uncle’s house, I told Saori about how I skipped school a lot and about how I was
n’t getting along with my mother. The only part I left out was why.

  “In time things will get better,” she said softly, consolingly. “Time is the best doctor they say.”

  “Maybe the doctor is out.”

  I really wanted to tell her that I had amnesia. But I couldn’t confess it to her without revealing that I had lied about being Kazuya’s friend.

  Someday, if this is all over, I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her why I’m here.

  *

  That night, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I heard the sound of the front door opening. I rinsed out my mouth and went to the door, where I noticed that Mr. Ishino’s worn-out shoes were gone. The sliding front door had a lattice pattern of frosted glass.

  I could see the old man on the other side.

  Without thinking anything else of it I opened the door to say good night.

  He was sitting on the steps that led down to the front gate. His back was small and hunched over. He didn’t seem like the same person Kazuya’s left eye had seen. It was as if he had lost his strength and withered away.

  When he noticed I was the one who had opened the door he gave me a weak smile, lowered his head a little, and said, “Hey.”

  “I’m going to bed. Good night.” Before I went back inside, I asked from the doorway, “What are you doing?”

  He seemed to have trouble answering. I started to worry that I had asked a rude question.

  “I was thinking of my wife.”

  He looked over at the washing line at the side of the house.

  He was sitting just where he could see it. That was where she had collapsed and passed on.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked . . .”

  I wanted to cry.

  “It’s okay. I just have a lot on my mind.”

  Outside it was cold and still. The darkness of night had stripped away all warmth.

  It seemed like he was going to keep sitting there, like he was punishing himself for something.

  He was apologizing to his wife. He had been violent toward her, and his regret had made him how he was now.

  He was meditating in the freezing cold, but I felt I shouldn’t interfere with his sacred ritual.

  And yet my feet stayed in place. From the front door I said to his back, “Kazuya told me about your wife.”

  I had seen it in my left eye.

  One night the old man had passed out drunk in the living room. His wife—standing above him with an expression that said, “Well, what else can I do?”—had covered him with a blanket.

  That was the whole inconsequential vision.

  But somehow her expression had overflowed with kindness for her husband, though I didn’t know why.

  I told him about the love she had shown for him as if I had heard it from Kazuya.

  “I’m sure she didn’t feel any resentment or unhappiness . . . At least that’s what Kazuya said.”

  He went quiet.

  I turned to go back inside.

  “Thank you,” he said without looking at me.

  I got into my futon and thought, She had to have known. She had to have thought he would feel like this after she died. Maybe that’s how she could have had that expression. Maybe she could see him for who he was, and that’s how she could be kind to him.

  She saw into the future.

  Would just anyone have noticed her? Kazuya hadn’t passed the moment by. Was it a coincidence that of all the many sights he had seen, that moment had burned vividly into his eyes? I don’t think it was. Kazuya had realized the beauty of that moment and turned his eyes upon it.

  *

  I knew Hitomi was inside that blue brick house. But without any solid proof of Shiozaki’s guilt I couldn’t accuse him of anything.

  In the café Shiozaki spoke to me. “I noticed I hadn’t seen you in a while, but then I heard you went back to your own home.”

  “Yeah,” I answered. On the inside I was screaming.

  He’s the one who caused Kazuya’s accident. I was nervous. Nervous and infuriated. Trying to hold back my fear, I took care not to say anything unusual.

  But with that he walked past me to his table at the rear of the café. Not until he sat did I feel relief.

  Sometimes I stayed at Melancholy Grove until the sun set and the café closed. When I did, I would walk the nighttime streets home with Saori. To get to her uncle’s house we had to walk along a dark road that cut through the forest. Saori said it was nothing to worry about, but I couldn’t help it.

  That particular day I planned to stay at the café until it closed, so I had some time to kill there talking and reading.

  On the shelf with the magazines and comic books, I saw the fairy tale book I’d noticed before—The Eye’s Memory. I remembered its creepy illustrations. Maybe that was why, as if on command, I took the book into my hands.

  I sat at the counter and started to read. As I turned the pages, stirred-up air danced under my nose. I was struck by a strange premonition that I was about to see something bad.

  I read a little bit. The main character was a talking raven.

  As I continued, I noticed that some parts of the story were similar to my own experiences. The blind girl put the eyes the raven gave her into her eye sockets, and then in her dreams saw what the eyes had seen.

  I thought the illustration of the raven taking out people’s eyeballs for the girl was horrifying—nothing I’d want a child to see.

  But when I finished the story, the picture of the raven gliding through the air, eyeball in his beak, stuck with me, very clear in my mind. The image was so strong I could almost hear his wings flapping.

  The raven didn’t want the girl to learn of the evil he’d done. He didn’t want her to know that he wasn’t a human. He’d struggled with it. And then, that ending.

  “Even if it wasn’t going to have a happy ending,” I said to Saori, “I feel so sorry for the girl’s parents the way it concluded.”

  She had been waiting behind the counter to hear what I thought of the tale. She made her fingers into the shape of a pistol, pointed it at me, and said, “Same here.”

  “Is this book here because Kimura likes it?”

  “I don’t think it’s his. One day it was just there on the shelf.”

  As I flipped through the pages once more, a realization came to me. Near the beginning the raven takes the eye of the baker’s son, and when the boy sees the raven’s beak clutching his own eye, he’s surprised at first and then becomes angry. And that was odd. Wouldn’t he have felt pain? It seemed like pain had been left out altogether.

  I looked for the name of the author and found it: Shun Miki. A man’s name.

  Saori and I walked home, shivering in the cold. Saori had always been talkative with me, but this night she was silent, something on her mind. I wondered if something was troubling her and then I remembered what Sumida had said.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Well . . .” Saori muttered, “Kyoko.”

  That was an answer I hadn’t expected. Why would she be worried about Kyoko?

  “You know,” I said, “that one time, you were coming from the road that goes to her house . . .”

  “I had gone to visit her. I wanted to talk to her.” When I asked why, she wouldn’t tell me, giving me only an ambiguous smile.

  After we had walked in silence for a while, we came upon her uncle’s house.

  “When Kazuya said that he wanted to donate his eyes, did you oppose it?”

  “Just a little. But it didn’t really bother me much.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because it’s what he wanted. And isn’t it a little exciting to think that his eyes are still alive somewhere out there?”

  She laughed. Then she told me about when he had filled out the consent form.

  “A year ago he went to see his eye doctor. He came home with a pamphlet about organ transplants.”

  He had filled out the form in front of her, saying his eye wo
uld be given to someone else after his death.

  Family consent was required for organ donors, and Saori gave hers. Hearing her talk about it, I was filled with emotion.

  If the two of them hadn’t done that, what would have happened to me? At the very least I would never have come here. I would never have been able to make these cherished memories. Then, someday my memory would have returned and my feelings would have changed, and I would never have known the sadness of not wanting to forget who I was.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen that fateful event in the memories of my left eye. Might I yet see it? I certainly hoped so.

  Then suddenly I realized why I hadn’t seen it.

  “When you signed those papers, did Kazuya have a bandage over his eye?”

  “Why do you ask?” She looked at me with curiosity, then told me that he had. “He had the bandages on for about three days and yeah, I think he had them on then.”

  “Was it his right eye or his left?”

  “His left eye.”

  The eye transplanted into my face had been covered by bandages. No matter how much time might pass by, I would never see him settling those papers, because the eye had never seen it.

  At that moment I became aware of a certain possibility. His left eye had been prevented from recording these events because it had been covered with bandages . . . Maybe there was a similar explanation for the discrepancy in the path from the accident site to Shiozaki’s house.

  What if when he was escaping from the house after seeing Hitomi through the cellar window something had covered his eye? Or he had closed his eyes. What if while the eye was blinded he had crossed the road, jumped over the guardrail, and fallen down the concrete wall. Then his eyesight had returned, and he’d run through the cedar trees, rolled down the slope, and gotten hit by the car.

  Would the vision have gone black while his left eye was covered? When I had seen it in the library I’d been in shock, and I might not have noticed the vision going dark. All he had done was cross a road and fall. It would have taken only five seconds.

  One mystery solved.