by Yusuke Kishi
There is debate about whether a pouch cow is really inseminating the host cow, or merely robbing it of the nutrients it would usually give to an egg.
There’s a folktale, or perhaps it’s an urban legend, surrounding the pouch cow. Once, the larva was caught climbing on a cow. While it was being removed, it let out a noise that sounded just like a cow’s. The other cows heard it and became disturbed, all crying out at the same time. This author has had numerous chances to observe pouch cow larvae, but regrettably, no cries have been heard.
It’s strange how we associated the miraculous power known as cantus with the strange animal called the pouch cow, silently eating its feed.
This probably isn’t because we were managed just like these animals by our school, but because we were all burdened with an identity we were not yet aware of.
Chapter 4
The house of cards rose in the blink of an eye.
I snuck a glance at Satoru sitting next to me. Looked like it was going well. He was already on the fourth layer. Satoru sensed that I was looking and spun the four of hearts card he was levitating with a smug expression on his face.
Determined not to lose, I focused on the house of cards before me. It was a simple task — stacking playing cards into pyramids — but actually doing it involves a lot of discipline in using your cantus.
First and foremost was concentration. The slightest touch or breath of wind would knock the house down. Next was spatial perception. Third was multitasking — you had to be able to pay attention to all that while looking out for signs that the house was about to fall and correct it in time.
Incidentally, there’s a story saying that when Shisei Kaburagi tried this assignment, he was able to complete it instantly by imagining a pyramid made of eighty-four cards. But no one else has ever been witnessed doing such a thing, so it’s probably just an exaggerated tale.
In Harmony School, we were instructed to build card houses on many occasions. I never thought that it would have been in preparation for Sage Academy.
“Saki, hurry it up,” Satoru said, unnecessarily.
“This isn’t a fair game. But don’t worry, I won’t lose to you.”
“Stupid, competing amongst ourselves isn’t going to do anything. Look at team five, they work really well together.”
I looked over and saw that all the members of team five were moving at the same pace, moving steadily toward the tip of the pyramid.
“And like always, our ace is in top form.”
As Satoru said, Shun was undeniably the best in our class. He had already built it up seven levels and was working on the eighth. No one else in the class could control cards the way he did, like the gentle flapping of butterfly wings. It was fascinating to watch.
“…but there’s also someone holding us back,” Satoru sighed, looking over the group.
Next to Satoru, Maria was working at almost the same speed as Shun, but her technique was sloppy and she had knocked over some of her cards twice already. But since she managed to fix it quickly each time, her pace was the same as ours on the whole. Next to Maria, Mamoru was almost the exact opposite. He worked almost unbearably carefully, but the result that his house was extremely stable. However, his slow pace meant that he was just barely above average in the class.
The problem was Reiko, sitting the farthest end. She hadn’t even completed one layer yet.
It was depressing watching her work. Her cards were shaking the same way a child’s hand would shake if they were bad at building card pyramids. Reiko was from Gold village, so I’d never seen her in school before, I have no doubts that she was also bad at making card houses back in Morality School.
Even so, her clumsiness was astounding. When it looked like she finally got the cards to stand up, it would collapse and she would have to start all over again.
“It’s so bad it’s almost funny,” Satoru shook his head and turned back to his own cards. “As long as she’s here we’ll never win.”
“So what? Reiko’s a good person, she just hasn’t had a breakthrough yet.” Even as I said that, I knew it was a lie. Reiko Amano couldn’t use her cantus well. No matter what task we were given, her results were always different from the dictated goals.
Earlier, we were playing a game similar to telephone in order to hone our image replication skills. Each group sits in a line and the first person is given an oil painting to look at. They then reproduce the picture as a sand drawing using their cantus and show it to the next person in line. That person only has a few seconds to look at the drawing before they have to reproduce it as accurately as possible. The team whose final drawing is the most faithful to the original wins.
For us, team one, I thought our image construction and transmission techniques were exceptional. Shun especially stood out from the rest of us. His pictures were so good they looked like photographs. The next best was Maria. Unfortunately, I was not as skilled as she is in producing accurate and artistic images.
If Satoru were first, he might not be able to do it, but he was great at copying sand drawings. I was the exact opposite; I was able to create sand drawings based on the originals. Mamoru was quite artistic and could produce beautiful pictures, but they weren’t always accurate.
Out of the six of us, Reiko was always the one messing up. If I were to be perfectly honest, her sand drawings looked like marks in the sand left by the torturous struggles of a dying crab. No matter how closely I looked at her pictures, I had no idea what she was drawing. No matter what position she was placed in line, her drawings never looked like anything other than random scratches.
In the house of cards competition too, her slowness was a deciding factor in our loss. The team with the highest number of cumulative layers wins, but before that, each member must build at least seven stories.
And this time, Reiko made a fatal mistake.
I was concentrating so hard on my own cards that I’m still not entirely sure what she did. Her cards suddenly flipped through the air and smacked into Maria’s.
Unsteady as it was, Maria’s card house was the second tallest of the group. It was flattened in an instant.
“Ah, I’m s-sorry!”
Needless to say, Reiko was panicked. Maria sat stunned for a few moments before she began rebuilding her pyramid twice as quickly as she had been doing. But given how little time we had left, even if both Shun and Maria’s pyramids were complete, it wouldn’t have been enough. Before she could even complete the third layer, a whistle blew, signaling the end of the competition.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I did something like that…” Reiko kept apologizing incessantly.
“Don’t worry about it. I knocked it over a bunch of times myself, anyway,” Maria said, smiling, but her eyes were empty.
Here, I’ll give a brief introduction of team one. The six members are Shun Aonuma, Maria Akizuki, Satoru Asahina, Reiko Amano, Mamoru Itou, and me, Saki Watanabe. You might have noticed that the names are in alphabetical order, so it would have made sense for me to be in team five, but I somehow wound up in team one. Since three of my good friends are in the same group, I thought it was done as a special consideration to help me get used to Sage Academy.
After class that day, Maria, Satoru, Shun, Mamoru and I walked down a small path that ran along the canal near school. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to be friends with Reiko, since we did hang out with her pretty often, but that we felt it might be awkward for her to be around us after messing up so badly.
“I wanna be able to use my full power already,” Satoru said, stretching.
Everyone felt the same way. Since we were still students, we couldn’t use our canti in public. Unlike the classes in Harmony Schools, the lectures at Sage Academy were long and tedious, but we had to go through them before our canti would be unsealed for the practical course at the end of the day.
“When you get to use your full powers, I have to be sure run away as far as I can,” I teased.
“Why?” said
Satoru sullenly.
“No particular reason.”
“I already have perfect control. But you’re clumsy as a drunk.”
“I think you’re both really good,” said Shun, trying to placate both of us.
“Hearing this from you, I can’t really be happy,” Satoru kicked a pebble into the canal.
“Why?” Shun asked, genuinely confused. “I’m not lying. I really think that both of you are good. Your cards didn’t go flying the wrong way or anything.”
“Aah, stop it already,” Maria sighed, covering her ears.
“Hmph, Shun’s unconsciously looking down on us. Don’t you think so, Saki?”
To tell the truth, I agreed with Satoru, but I didn’t say that.
“Don’t lump me in with you. You’re the only one being looked down on.”
“What? No I’m not,” Satoru grumbled, then suddenly fell silent.
“What’s wrong?” Maria asked.
Satoru pointed to an area of the canal six or seven meters ahead of us. “Look at that.”
There were two humanoid shapes shrouded in dirt-colored robes.
“…queerats?” Maria whispered, twisting a lock of red hair between her fingers.
“Yeah. What are they doing?”
Shun was fascinated, as was I. This was the first time I had ever been this close to a queerat.
“We shouldn’t stare,” Mamoru warned. His curly hair always made it look like his head was exploding. “In Friendship, if we saw queerats,we were told not to stare or get close. Didn’t they ever tell you in Harmony School?”
Of course we had been, but it’s human nature to want to do things you’ve been told are forbidden. We advanced slowly, keeping an eye on their movements.
I remembered what my father had told me when I was younger. As we got closer, we saw that the queerats were in the process of cleaning the trash that collected in the bends in the canal where the water flowed slower. They were diligently scooping up leaves and twigs with nets on bamboo poles.
Something like this could be done in an instant with cantus, but no doubt humans find it too boring to be worth their time.
“They’re working pretty hard.”
“But it looks hard to hold a net with hands like that.”
I was thinking the same thing as Maria.
“It sure seems like it. Their skeletons are structured differently from ours, just standing on two legs is hard enough.”
It was just as Shun said. Even though we couldn’t see their bodies covered by the robes, the arms holding the nets looked rodent-like, and they balanced unsteadily on their hind legs.
“…we shouldn’t be watching them,” Mamoru took a few steps away from us and turned his back to the queerats.
“Come on, nothing’s gonna happen…hey, watch out!” Satoru ran forward shouting.
One of the queerats had tried to lift up a net laden with leaves that was heavier than it had anticipated. With a huge wobble, it pitched forward.
The other queerat tried to catch it, but was a second too late. The first queerat fell headfirst into the canal.
There was a huge splash. We rushed forward.
The fallen queerat was struggling under the water about a meter away. It couldn’t swim very well. In addition, leaves and twigs were tangled all around it, preventing it from moving.
Its companion dashed back and forth in a panic — it didn’t seem to realize that it could hold out the net for the queerat to grab.
I took a deep breath and concentrated.
“Saki, what are you trying to do?” Maria asked, surprised.
“Helping it.”
“Huh, how?”
“It’s better not to have anything to do with them!” Mamoru shouted in a cowardly voice from behind.
“It’s fine, I just have to lift this part to get him back to shore. It’ll be easy.”
“You can’t be serious…”
“You can’t just use your cantus whenever you want.”
“I think you should stop too.”
“If I don’t do anything, it’ll die!”
I calmed down, drove their voices out of my mind and chanted my mantra.
“But this is really bad.”
“We were taught to be compassionate to all living things, right?”
I focused on the queerat bobbing in the water. The problem was that it kept moving and all the leaves and debris made it hard to get a grasp on its size.
“…it’s easier to lift it up along with the leaves,” Shun said, realizing my dilemma.
I cast him a grateful glance and tuned out the others.
I concentrated on lifting the mass of leaves, imagining it rising up. Finally, it broke the surface tension and hovered above the water.
Water trapped in the pile cascaded into the canal. Bits of leaves that had escaped my notice fluttered down. The queerat should be somewhere in there, though I couldn’t see it. I slowly guided it toward the shore. Everyone stepped back to make room.
I gently dropped it on the path.
The queerat was alive.
Thrashing and kicking, it managed to turn over and cough up a flood of water and bubbles. Up close, it was pretty big. It was probably a meter tall fully upright.
“Wow, it looked like you just scooped it up with a big net. That’s a perfect levitation.”
“Yeah, thanks to your advice.”
As I was basking in Shun’s praise, Satoru cut in.
“What do we do now? If the school finds out…”
“As long as they don’t find out, it’s fine.”
“I’m saying what if they find out?”
Maria came to my rescue.
“Everyone absolutely has to keep this a secret, okay? For Saki’s sake.”
“Okay,” said Shun without hesitation.
“You too Satoru, got it?”
“You don’t have to tell me. But what if it gets out somehow?”
“It doesn’t seem like anyone saw us. As long as no one says anything, it’ll be fine,” Maria replied. “Mamoru?”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what…”
“Nothing happened today. I didn’t see anything. I had nothing to do with the queerats or anything.”
“Good boy.”
“But what do we do about this?” Satoru wrinkled his nose at the queerat.
“It’s not going to talk to anyone.”
“Can queerats talk?” Shun looked curious.
I approached the queerat who was still lying on the ground. I wondered if it was injured somewhere. When the other queerat saw me, it also fell prostrate to the floor.
They were obviously afraid of humans.
“Hey, I saved your life, got it?” I tried to speak gently.
“You shouldn’t talk to queerats!” Mamoru shouted in a strangled voice from somewhere behind me.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
The soaked queerat nodded silently. Looking a lot more comfortable now that it was back on all fours, it crawled over to me and made a movement like it was kissing my shoes.
They both bowed. Somehow, that simple action was full of meaning. Suddenly, I really wanted to know what their faces looked like.
“Hey, look this way,” I clapped my hands lightly.
“Saki, stop it already,” Maria sounded slightly stunned.
“Seriously, you can’t…the queerats,” Mamoru sounded even farther away now.
“Do you understand what I’m saying? Lift your head up.”
The queerats lifted their heads nervously.
Somehow, I had been expecting a cute face like a field mouse’s, so I was shocked.
Under the hood was a face uglier than any I had ever seen on a living thing. It had a flat snout, more like a pig’s that a rat’s, loose pale skin that hung in folds and was covered in brown, downy hairs, and shiny, beady eyes.
“Th★k yu Thakyu. Kikikikiki. Kakakakaga★…ds. Gods.”
The queerat suddenly started
speaking in a high squeaky voice. I froze in surprise.
“It’s talking…” Maria murmured.
The other three were dumbfounded.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“§@★＃◎＆∈∂Å♪” it chirped in a sing-song voice. Spit frothed at the corners of its mouth.
I knew it was saying its name, but there’s no way to write it out in Japanese, not that I even remember what it was.
“Well it looks like we won’t have to worry about them ratting us out,” Satoru said, sounding relieved. “It’s not like anyone will understand what they say.”
Our anxiety gone, we started laughing. But for some reason, a chill ran up my spine as I looked at the queerats.
It felt like I had touched on something taboo that was hidden deep in my heart.
“Although we can’t use their names, there should be some other way to tell them apart,” Shun mused.
“You can tell by their tattoos.”
Surprisingly, it was Mamoru who had spoken.
“Tattoo? Where?”
“Somewhere on their forehead. It should have their colony and identification number,” Mamoru said, his back still turned.
I put my hand tentatively on the queerat’s head and lifted its hood. It stayed docile like a trained dog.
“There it is.”
Down the length of its forehead, the words “Goat 619” were tattooed in blue ink.
“What do these words mean?”
“It has to be the colony’s emblem,” Shun said.
Queerats have three characteristics that are unlike most other animals.
The first is their appearance which is the basis for their name. Queerats resemble hairless rats and are around sixty centimeters to a meter in length. Standing upright, they’re between 1.2 and 1.4 meters. In some cases they can be as tall as an average human.
Second, even though they are very clearly mammals, they are eusocial, like ants or bees, and live in colonies with a queen. This is a trait that comes from their ancestor, the east African naked mole rat. Small colonies have only around two or three hundred workers, but large ones can have thousands, even up to ten thousand, workers.
