by Isis, Justin
Ayano had not yet decided what she would do after graduation, and the question had been preoccupying her for some time. She was approaching the end of her third year, and most of her classmates were already preparing for university. She had a vague idea that she would like to study medicine, but it was only that this seemed slightly more interesting than business, or law, or anything else. At the moment, though, all she could think about was the next test, the next assignment, what she would do on the weekend. Graduation seemed distant, but at certain moments she became aware of time moving past, and it seemed to her that at some point the future would arrive suddenly, leaving her stranded and unprepared.
Today she had been sitting in History with Mr. Fukuda, listening to Ryoko Iwasaki and Yuka Morinaga talking behind her. Fukuda was in the process of handing back their tests from the week before, and as Ayano looked at the slashes of red pen across the front of the approaching paper she knew she had failed before she even saw the grade. In part she had expected it: the test had been culled from months of previous material that she hadn’t bothered to review. Usually she kept on top of things, but in History she had allowed the material to accumulate without keeping track of it. When the paper landed on her desk she glanced at the grade once and turned it over without looking at the questions.
—Are you coming on Friday? Ryoko asked Yuka behind her. We’re meeting in Ikebukuro at eight.
—Yeah, I’ll be there, Yuka said.
—Oh, and Akiko and Masuda are coming too. She showed me this necklace he got her the other day, it’s way better than anything Shun got her.
—She’s so lucky, Yuka said.
Ayano turned around.
—Is Akiko going out with Masuda?
Ryoko pretended not to have heard her, and Ayano repeated the question. Finally she turned and answered, her voice strained with contempt.
—Yeah, for the past month.
—But they don’t even have anything in common.
—What would you know about it anyway?
Ayano turned around and looked at the test in front of her. She tried to pay attention as Fukuda droned through a list of common mistakes, but all she could think of was Naoki Masuda giving a necklace to Akiko Mitsui. She knew it was probably plain, little more than a trinket, but in her mind it became a diamond necklace, enormous and glittering, resting imperiously on Akiko’s throat.
And why shouldn’t they be going out? a voice in her head said. Why shouldn’t he give her a necklace? What would you know about it anyway?
A weight settled over her limbs. She remembered the first time she’d seen Masuda, when she was still a first-year: he sat two seats in front of her in math, and she spent the entire first class peering forward, pretending to be looking at the blackboard but actually staring at the back of his neck, at the base of his broad shoulders. Within a week she knew a little more about him: he was a baseball player; he lived in Saitama; he had a high-pitched, unrestrained laugh. She tended these pieces of information like entries in a scrapbook, and whenever she was bored or sad or alone she took them out and went through them, turning them over in her mind. And over time, without her even noticing, Masuda’s presence became her only reason to continue whenever she felt unmotivated — there was always the chance that he would notice her, always the chance that he would talk to her, and so it was inconceivable to miss a single day of school. She always had Ayako to keep her company, but this was different — nothing solid, nothing she could explain definitely, but something with her at all times, at the back of her mind. And because her own feelings couldn’t be articulated, she never said a word about them to anyone, not even her sister. She had always been good at keeping secrets.
The class finished. She shoved the test under the cover of her notebook and followed her classmates into the hall, careful to stay out of everyone’s way. Ayano had four classes left until the end of the day, but she already knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate. She realized this was absurd — she had no claim of ownership over Masuda, had barely even spoken to him. And the test, she told herself, was not important in the long run; her earlier scores were high enough that it would scarcely dent her average. There was no reason for her to care excessively about either of these things, but in her mind she found herself bouncing from one to the other, and each made her feel worse. On a normal day she would have turned to her sister for comfort, but today Ayako was home with a cold. And she couldn’t return home immediately either — her mother had asked her to pick up groceries. She would have to detour on her way back, taking a later train than usual. But for now she would keep her head down, take notes mechanically and hope the teachers ignored her.
At 3:30 she walked to the main gate, following the crowd of students. She caught the bus and took a seat near the back. Some of her classmates took seats in front of her and she avoided meeting their eyes. As the bus took off she sent Ayako a text message and leaned against the window, watching the winter sun as it moved behind a patch of clouds. It was still only mid-afternoon, but already dusk was falling. Further off, more clouds blurred the edges of distant buildings. She turned from the window and placed her phone back in her bag. Then she sat up rigidly, her hands folded in front of her.
For the first time in as long as she could remember she felt that she hated someone. Her hatred was stupid, she knew, only envy really; but in her mind Akiko Mitsui seemed changed into a symbol of all that was coarse and common and wrong. She didn’t blame Masuda — he, for his part, seemed innocent in all this, even though he’d bought the necklace — since she knew it was all Akiko’s fault somehow. And what made her hatred stronger was not any extraordinary quality in Akiko; instead it was that she didn’t seem extraordinary enough. If Masuda had chosen a girl Ayano couldn’t hope to compete with — Hisae Sato with her perfect hair, or Haruna Yamamoto, who had done modelling — then she could have accepted it more easily. But Akiko was not someone who usually drew attention. She was one of the normal girls, someone Ayano had been on good enough terms with, if not quite friends. She was not especially beautiful or talented or intelligent. If anything, her friends overshadowed her.
But maybe Akiko really was an extraordinary person — maybe Masuda had seen something in her that Ayano hadn’t. Or — what if he wasn’t serious about the relationship? Each line of thought threw up more questions than the last, and as she stepped off the bus Ayano found herself unable to think of anything else. She made her way to Seiyu without paying attention to the streets, letting her feet direct her along the route she’d taken countless times. Her parents usually shopped at organic food specialty stores, but today most everything on the list was easily obtainable: pickled cabbage, crackers, rice, miso soup. Ayano knew the layout of the store by heart, but still she shopped slowly, browsing the aisles, occasionally picking up an item — red bean paste, curry bread, a packet of biscuits — inspecting it, then placing it back on the shelf.
She stopped in front of the frozen meat section. Ahead of her, a young mother was pushing along a baby in a stroller, and as she came closer Ayano saw that she was beautiful. Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was dyed a chestnut brown, matching her lightly tanned skin. High cheekbones added to the effect of her thin, delicate lips, while her minimal makeup highlighted a perfectly clear complexion. At the moment she was comparing prices on packets of mince-meat, taking them down from the shelf and weighing them in her hand. Next to her, the baby sat up in the stroller, its eyes fixed on its mother’s movements.
Ayano moved to the side, taking in the woman’s profile. She would never be able to look like that, she thought — like this woman, probably only five years older than herself. She thought back to all the time she’d spent balancing her diet, monitoring her intake of calories, saving her money for skin care products. All of it had amounted to nothing — she was still too tall, too thin, her cheeks pocked and pale. The realization came as a sudden paralysis, and she continued to stare in the woman’s direction long after she had chosen her mince an
d moved on. What was the point of being healthy if you never looked any better, if your breasts never filled out, your hips never widened, skin never cleared? Then she thought of beautiful girls in her class who always ate hamburgers, ice cream sundaes, enormous bowls of curry rice. Probably the woman was someone like them — someone who never gave any thought to what she ate, and worse, didn’t need to.
She shivered from the air-conditioning, then braced herself in a sudden movement. Ahead of her were rows of steaks, chops, bacon and sausages. There was something faintly repulsive about them, but she supposed it was as much their unfamiliarity as anything else. On the few occasions when she had given the meat aisle any thought, she had reflected only on the origin of the products: of cows herded into pens and knocked unconscious; of skinned pigs strung up in slaughterhouses, their blood draining through the floor vents; of butchers working, sectioning flesh, dividing carcasses and hacking them into joints. Ayano had never seen any of these things for herself, but she knew they were occurring somewhere, and the thought had always distressed her. It all seemed hopeless to change, and now she felt the same hopelessness as she stared at the meat in front of her. She knew it had once been part of living beings — but the woman didn’t care, and neither, it seemed, did anyone else.
She moved closer and picked up a steak. The surface of the meat was a dull red, trimmed with white ribbons of fat, glazed with a slick residue of blood. She thought of the cow standing on the slaughterhouse floor, its mind a kind of fog. But then a strange thing happened. As she thought of the obliviousness of the cow, she felt calmer than before. The cow had been slaughtered, but it had died quickly, and if it had felt any dread, it was not the same as human dread — nothing as terrible as conscious dread. In the death of the cow there was something purifying, she decided: it did not deserve to die, but its own death was not anything it could understand, and so it died without any calculation, any human hypocrisy.
She looked at the steak a while longer, then dropped it into her basket and hurried towards the checkout line.
When she arrived home her parents were out. She went up to Ayako’s room and found her in bed, sipping a fruit smoothie.
—Feeling better?
—Yeah.
Ayako placed the glass on the table beside the bed and blinked twice, rapidly. She looked sleepy.
—My throat hurts, she said. It’s like there’s broken glass in my throat when I swallow. But I think it’s getting better.
She sat up and Ayano saw the pink and grey outline of her pajamas.
—That sounds bad.
—Mm. I’m getting used to it.
She pulled the cover aside and handed Ayano a piece of paper divided by a marker into a grid of nine panels.
—I started drawing manga. But then I got tired and gave up. Do you want to finish it?
Ayano looked down at the paper, at the panels filled with stick figures and empty dialogue balloons. One of the sisters’ ambitions was to produce a serious fantasy-themed manga, but apart from a few preliminary scenes and sketches, the project had never gotten beyond the conceptual stage.
—I might later. I’m going to cook first.
—Oh, what are you making?
Ayano smiled.
—It’s a secret. I’ll let you have some later.
—It’s not pancakes, is it? Ayako asked.
—No.
—Oh. I feel like pancakes.
She pulled the cover back up.
—Anyway, I’m going to sleep for a bit.
—All right, I’ll wake you up when I’m done.
Downstairs, she took a pan from the shelves and poured in a small amount of vegetable oil, shaking the handle gently until a golden film spread across its surface. She placed the pan on the range and turned on the gas, then got the steak from the table and peeled off the protective plastic wrapping. The feel of the raw meat in her hands was unpleasant; it reminded her of other soft, wet things she hated: slugs, perhaps, or rain-drenched socks. But there was a toughness to it she hadn’t felt before. She realized what she was feeling was a muscle — the same kind of flesh as her arms and legs. At some point its tiny fibres had flexed, tense and hot with life... she pushed the thought away and laid the steak down on the frying pan. A soft frizzing sound rose up slowly. She took a combination salt and pepper shaker from the cupboard and sprinkled it over the steak, then stood back and waited. After a few minutes she turned it over with a fork, careful not to splash the oil. On the other side, the surface of the meat had darkened — ‘browned’, she supposed, was the term — and taken on an added toughness when she prodded it with the fork. She waited another few minutes and turned off the flame. Once she’d gotten a plate from the shelf, she took the steak from the pan and cut it into even strips. She was surprised to find it still pink in the center, a pink the color of the skin under a scab, fading to grey at the edges. The ribbons of white fat had turned a brownish yellow. After pouring herself a glass of water, she sat down at the table and lifted a piece of the meat to her mouth.
At first she hated it — the steak’s texture was unfamiliar, tough on the outside and soft in the center; but more than that the taste was overpowering. She’d expected an earthy flavor, like black beans or fried mushrooms, but the flavor of the steak was richer, sharper: a pungent, savory alien taste. She must have used too much salt, she decided — or not enough, she couldn’t tell which. For all she knew she’d cooked it wrong; her method, after all, had been improvised from memories of housewives preparing meals in television dramas. But however the steak had been cooked, the underlying taste was unmistakable. It was the taste of blood, of cooked animal flesh.
After a few bites she pushed the plate aside. The smell of the steak filled the tiny kitchen. She was afraid she would vomit, but the feeling soon lessened, leaving only a weight in her throat. She swallowed several times and drained her glass of water, then looked at the steak again and considered throwing it away. But something held her back. If she threw it in the garbage her parents would find it, or else it would rot horribly, drawing flies. She had cooked it herself, she decided, and now she would have to eat it. And as she alternated each bite with the water, she found herself adjusting to the taste. If the woman in the supermarket could stomach it then so could she; it was only a matter of overcoming the initial disgust.
She took a final sip of water and carried the half-finished steak upstairs. Ayako was still in bed, resting on her side, and as she heard the sound of the door she sat up.
—I couldn’t sleep. After you said you were going to cook I started getting hungry.
She looked over at the plate.
—You cooked soy steak? It looks weird...
—No, Ayano said. It’s a real steak.
Ayako started to smile, then stopped as she noticed her sister’s solemn expression. She threw off the covers and peered down at the plate.
—Seriously?
Ayano nodded, and then Ayako was out of bed and sitting on the floor next to her, all the sleepiness gone from her eyes.
—Where’d you get it? she asked.
—Seiyu.
—Okay... why?
Ayano did her best to explain what had gone through her mind in the supermarket as she stood in front of the meat aisle. She couldn’t define the vague impulse that had led her to buying the steak, and she left out the part about Masuda, but other than that the story came out clearly enough. Ayako sat listening, staring at her sister with muted alarm; and when Ayano had finished she sat for a while, looking at her in silence.
—I don’t know... she said at last. I don’t think it would taste good. Meat is kind of... gross. I don’t know how it tastes, but...
Ayano was a little surprised that her sister had not presented a more complex argument. But then, the two of them rarely discussed their diet. Being vegetarian was something they took for granted, but it had never been an issue of any personal passion — at least, not to the extent of their parents. As for herself, she retained a vagu
e sense of having done something wrong, but it was not as strong as she had expected. Instead she felt as if she had been let in on a secret — a secret known to most everyone around her, perhaps, but still a secret from her sister.
But then Ayako added:
—Maybe the cow does feel worse. It has to be afraid in there, even if it doesn’t understand what’s going on. Maybe it’s actually worse because it doesn’t really know what’s going to happen — maybe it’s more afraid, I mean. And I heard sometimes it takes a really long time to knock them out — even if they stun them, it doesn’t always work the first time.
Ayano considered this. For all she knew, it was true — but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that there was something noble and uncomplicated about the cow’s slaughter. The mechanical death of an animal seemed more dignified than any kind of human death. But she couldn’t say exactly why it was so.
—I think you should at least try it, she said, knowing already that Ayako would comply, since her loyalty to her sister was stronger than her loyalty to their parents. She pushed the plate forward, and after a pause Ayako took the fork and raised it to her mouth. She chewed slowly for a while, then frowned, closing her eyes in an expression of distaste.
—Nnn, no, I don’t like it, she said, then leaned over the plate and spat out the half-chewed steak.
—Try some more. I didn’t like it at first either. It gets better, though.
But Ayako shook her head and pushed the plate away. Ayano tried cajoling her for a while, but eventually Ayako retreated to the bed and she gave up. The steak had gone cold, so she went downstairs and finished it herself, washing it down with water and a glass of orange juice. She washed the plate carefully to remove any trace of grease, then returned to the table and sat for a while, thinking over the day’s events.
