by Yusuke Kishi
Fiends have never appeared since then.
There are a couple of lessons in this story.
Kids can easily understand that it’s teaching you to stay within the Holy Barrier. For slightly older kids, it’s probably trying to tell us that we should be more concerned about our village than ourselves, and be prepared to sacrifice our lives for it.
But the smarter you are, the harder it is to understand the real lesson.
Who would have thought that the real aim of the story is to let us know that fiends really do exist?
Tale of the Karma Demon
This story is from about eighty years ago. There lived a boy in the village. He was an incredibly bright child, but had one flaw. As he grew older, this flaw became more and more obvious.
He was extremely proud of his intelligence and looked at everything else with disdain.
He pretended to accept the teachings in school and from other adults, but the important lessons never really reached his heart.
He began to sneer at the foolishness of adults and laugh at the laws of the world.
Arrogance sows the seeds of karma.
The boy gradually drifted away from his circle of friends. Loneliness became his only companion and confidant.
Loneliness is the seedbed of karma.
In his solitude, the boy spend a lot of time thinking. He thought about forbidden things and questioned things better left alone.
Unclean thoughts cause karma to grow unchecked.
The boy unknowingly built up more and more karma, and transformed into something inhuman — a karma demon.
Before anyone knew, the village was empty; everyone had fled in fear of the karma demon. It went to live in the forest, but all the animals there disappeared too.
As the karma demon walked, the plants around it twisted in all sorts of unimaginable shapes and rotted.
All the food it touched instantly turned into lethal poison.
The karma demon wandered aimlessly through the dead, deformed forest.
Eventually, it came to realize that it shouldn’t be living in this world.
The karma demon left the darkness of the forest. Before his eyes, he saw it, wreathed in a glittering radiance. He had arrived at a deep lake nestled in the mountains.
It walked into the lake, thinking that water as pure as this would surely cleanse him of his karma.
But the water surrounding it instantly became dark and murky, and started turning into poison.
Karma demons should not exist in this world.
It understood that, and quietly disappeared into the bottom of the lake.
The lesson here is probably more straightforward than in the fiend story.
But of course, that doesn’t mean we understood the real meaning behind it. At least, not until that that day, where in our endless despair and sadness, we saw a true karma demon before our very eyes…
Sorry, sometimes as I’m writing, a flood of memories threaten to suffocate me and I can’t control it. Let’s go back to my childhood.
Like I wrote before, Kamisu 66 is made up of seven villages. In the center is where the town’s administration is gathered. On the eastern bank of the Tone River is the village of Hayring. To the north, in the middle of a forest dotted with big houses, is Pinewind. East of that, the forest opened up to the coastlands, where Whitesand is. Adjacent to Hayring in the south is the village of Waterwheel. On the other bank of the river toward the northwest is the village Outlook, whose name comes from its location. Lined up with the rice paddies in south is Gold, and Oakgrove is the westmost.
My hometown is Waterwheel. This name probably needs a bit of explanation. Dozens of canals leading off of the Tone River wind through Kamisu 66 and people come and go by boats. Despite that, the constant movement of the water meant it was clean enough to bathe in, though you might think twice about drinking it. In front of my house, in addition to a lot of brightly colored red and white koi swimming around, there were also a lot of water wheels, which is where the name comes from. Every village has water wheels, our village has quite a number of them, and they made for a magnificent sight. Overshot, backshot, undershot, breastshot… Those are all the ones I can remember. There might have been more. A lot of them were used to relieve us of mundane tasks like hulling rice and milling wheat.
Among them was a kind of water wheel only some villages had, with metal blades used to generate electricity. The valuable energy is used to power the loudspeakers on the roof of the public hall. Uses of electricity outside of this was strictly prohibited by the Code Ethics.
Every day just before sunset, the loudspeakers would play the same melody. It’s called “Going Home” and came from a part of a symphony written a long, long time ago by a composer with the strange name of Dvorak. The lyrics we learned in school go something like this.
The sun sets over the distant mountains
Stars stud the sky
Today’s work is finished
My heart feels light
In the cool evening breeze
Come, gather around
Gather around
The bonfire burning brightly in the darkness
Now dies down
Sleep comes easily
Inviting me to disappear
Gently watching over us
Come, let us dream
Let us dream
When the song plays, all the children playing in the fields had to return home. That’s why whenever I think of the song, sunset sceneries reflexively appear in my mind. The town during twilight. Long shadows on the sandy soil of the pine forest. Dozens of grey skies reflected in mirrored surface of the paddy fields. Groups of red dragonflies. But the most vivid memories are of watching the sunset from the top of the hill.
When I close my eyes, one scene comes to mind. It was some time between the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, when the weather had just started getting cooler.
“We have to go home now,” someone said.
When I listened carefully, I could hear the faint melody carried over by the wind.
“Then let’s call it a tie then,” Satoru said, and the children came out of hiding in groups of twos and threes.
Everyone, ranging from ages eight to eleven, had spent the entire day engaged in a large-scale game of capture the flag. It’s a game like a prolonged midwinter snowball fight, where you have two teams who must invade the other’s territory and in the end whoever manages to steal the other team’s flag wins. That day, our team had made a grave mistake in our opening move and seemed really likely to lose.
“That’s not fair. We were just about to win too,” Maria pouted. She was more fair-skinned than everyone else, and had big, light-colored eyes. More than anything else, her flaming red hair made her very conspicuous.
“Hurry up and surrender already.”
“Yeah, because we’re way better,” Ryou chimed in after Maria. Even at this age, Maria had the makings of a queen.
“Why should we surrender?” I replied indignantly.
“‘Cause we’re better,” Ryou repeated the same old argument.
“But you haven’t even taken our flag yet,” I looked at Satoru.
“It’s a tie,” he declared.
“Satoru, you’re on this team, aren’t you? Why are you taking their side?” Maria snapped.
“I can’t help it, the rule says that curfew is at sundown.”
“But the sun hasn’t set yet.”
“Don’t split hairs, that’s just because we’re at the top of the hill, right?” I said, biting back my irritation. Even though we’re usually good friends, at times like these, Maria annoys me.
“Hey, we really have to go,” Reiko said worriedly.
“When we hear ‘Going Home’, we’re supposed to return right away.”
“If they surrender, then we can go home,” Ryou parroted Maria.
“Stop it already. Hey, ref!” Satoru shouted exasperatedly at Shun. Shun stood apart from us at the top of th
e hill gazing at the scenery. His bulldog Subaru sat quietly next to him.
“What?” he replied after a beat.
“Don’t ‘what’ me. Tell them it’s a tie.”
“Yeah, it’s a draw,” Shun said, turning back to the view.
“We’re going home then,” Reiko said and a group of them headed down the hill together because they shared boats to get to their respective villages.
“Wait, we’re not done yet.”
“I’m going, or else the copycats will get us.”
Maria and them looked unsatisfied, but the game had gradually ended.
“Saki, we should go back too,” Satoru said as I walked toward Shun.
“Aren’t you leaving?”
“Yeah,” Shun didn’t look away from the mesmerizing scenery.
“Hey, let’s go already,” Satoru said impatiently.
Shun pointed silently.
“Over there, you see it?”
“What?”
He was pointing in the direction of Gold, near the border between the paddy fields and the forest.
“There, a minoshiro.”
Ever since we were young, we were taught that our eyes were more important than anything else, so we were all blessed with good vision. This time too, from hundreds of meters away, on a footpath between the fields where twilight and shadows crossed, I could discern the white shape of something moving slowly along.
“You’re right.”
“What about it? It’s not like they’re rare or anything.” Satoru’s usually calm voice was tinged with displeasure for some reason.
But I didn’t move. Didn’t want to move.
The minoshiro moved at a snail’s pace across the footpath, through the meadow and disappeared into the forest. As I traced its path, my attention turned to Shun.
I didn’t know yet the name of the emotion I felt. As I stood next to him looking at the village dyed in the light of the setting sun, my chest was filled with a sweet yet painful feeling.
Maybe this too was a fabricated scene. A dramatization made with a mix of similar episodes, sprinkled with a spice we call sentiment…
Be that as it may, these scenes still hold a special meaning for me to this day. The final memory of a life in a flawless world. A time when everything was in its place and there were no doubts about the future.
Even now, when I think of my first love, it still gives off a warm glow, like the setting sun. Even though that, and everything else would soon be swallowed by a bottomless void of sadness and emptiness.
Chapter 2
I’m going to talk a little bit more about my childhood.
In Kamisu 66, children are required to start going to school at age six. The one I went to was called Harmony School. There are two other similar schools called Friendship and Morality.
At that time, the population was a little bit over three thousand. I only found out after researching about education in the ancient past that having three schools for such a small population is apparently quite remarkable. But this only served to show that the true nature of the society I was born in was a lot more than meets the eye. As for other statistics during the same period, over half of the adults in the community were, for whatever reason, pursuing education related professions.
This is inconceivable for a monetary economy. But for a community based on mutual cooperation, money is not necessary. {The spread of human resources naturally directs itself toward areas that are needed the most, and those people complete tasks as required.}
Harmony School was about a twenty minute walk from my house. It’s even faster by boat, but the oars are too big and heavy for children to row, so walking is preferable.
The school is in a quiet location a little ways away from the town center on the southern edge of Hayring. It’s a one-story structure made of dark, polished wood in the shape of an A. The front entrance is the crossbar of the A. When you go in, the first thing you see is the phrase “Cherish Harmony” framed on the wall. It’s the first article in the Seventeen-article Constitution written by a sage from the ancient times called Prince Shoutoku. It means to build everything on harmony. That’s where the name of our school comes from. I don’t know what sayings are hanging on the walls in Friendship and Morality.
Along the side of the entrance were faculty rooms and classrooms. More classrooms are lined up on the right arm of the A. Although the number of people at school, faculty included, was no more than a hundred fifty, we had over twenty classrooms. The administration wing was on the left and students were not allowed to enter.
In the yard in front of the building were a sports field, jungle gyms and other playground equipment, and an enclosure for animals we raised such as chickens, ducks, rabbits, hamsters and more. The students take turns caring for the animals. In the corner of the yard stood a white, wooden instrument box. No one knows what it’s for; in the six years we were at the school, it was never once used.
The courtyard surrounded by the three school buildings was a huge mystery. Students were strictly forbidden from entering and we never had any excuse to.
Apart from in the administration wing, there were no windows that looked out onto the courtyard. So the only time we had a chance to peek inside was if we happened to be in there when the door was opened.
“…so what do you think is in the courtyard?” Satoru asked us with an eerie grin. We all held our breaths.
“Wait, you don’t know what’s in there either, right?” I couldn’t stand him dragging out the tension like that.
“Well, not personally, but there’s someone who did,” Satoru said, looking annoyed at being interrupted.
“Who?”
“Someone you don’t know.”
“Not a student?”
“He graduated already.”
“What’s with that?” I made my disbelief obvious.
“That doesn’t matter, just tell us what he saw already,” Maria said. Everyone made sounds of agreement.
“Okay. Well, people who don’t believe it don’t have to listen…” Satoru glanced at me slyly. I pretended not to notice. It would have been better to walk away, but I actually wanted to hear what he had to say.
“When students are present, teachers never open the door that leads to he courtyard, right? You know, the one in front of the administration building that’s made of evergreen wood. But that time, they accidentally forgot to check if there were people around and opened the door.”
“You already told us this,” Ken pressed.
“In there was…an incredible number of graves!” He was obviously exaggerating, but everyone else seemed awestruck.
“Wow…”
“Liar.”
“That’s freaky,” Maria covered her ears with her hands. I told her she was being ridiculous.
“So, whose graves are those?”
“Huh?” Satoru had been enjoying the effect his scary story had on the others and was caught unprepared.
“Since there are so many of them, whose are they?”
“I dunno. Anyway, there was a ginormous number of them.”
“Why would they deliberately put graves in the school courtyard?”
“Like I said, I only know that much.”
It seemed like Satoru was taking the easy way out by insisting that since he only heard this from someone else, he didn’t have the answer to everything.
“…maybe they’re students’ graves?” Ken said, and everyone fell silent.
“Students? From when? Why did so many die?” Maria asked in a low voice.
“I’m not sure, but I’ve heard that some people don’t graduate from here and just disappear…”
The students in the three schools in our town all entered school at the same time, but for reasons I’ll explain later, graduated at different times. But this time it felt like Ken’s words had somehow touched on a subject that was deeply taboo and no one knew what to say to that.
At that moment, Shun, who had been sitting apart
from us reading a book, looked over. In the light coming in from the windows, I realized that he had really long eyelashes.
“There aren’t any graves.”
Everyone was relieved by his words, but then a huge question occurred to us.
“What do you mean there aren’t any? How do you know?” I asked for all of us, and Shun answered nonchalantly.
“There weren’t any when I saw it.”
“Huh?”
“Shun, you’ve seen it?”
“Really?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
We showered him with questions. Satoru looked disappointed at having his thunder stolen.
“I guess I never mentioned this before. Last year, there was one time when the homework wasn’t collected. An assignment on a personal observation for science class. The teacher told me to bring them when they were all turned in, so I went over to the administration wing.”
We all waited with bated breath for him to continue, but Shun took his time marking the book he was reading with a bookmark.
“One of the rooms filled with books has windows that looks into the courtyard. There were some strange things out there, but no graves.”
It seemed like he wanted the conversation to end there. I still had about a thousand questions I wanted to ask, so I took a deep breath.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Satoru said in an unsteady voice I’d never heard before. “What ‘strange things’? Explain properly.”
You didn’t want to explain anything yourself, I thought, but I wanted to hear Shun’s answer, so I didn’t interrupt.
“Um, how should I say this. Lined up at the far end of the courtyard were about five of what looked like brick storage rooms, with big wooden doors in front of them.”
Although his answer didn’t explain anything, it had a strange truth to it. Satoru, unable to think of further questions, tsk-ed.
“So, Satoru, that one guy who graduated, what did he see again?” I pressed. He seemed to realize that the situation had turned on him and hesitated to answer.
