I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like

by Isis, Justin

  —Punch me in the stomach.

  Tomo stood motionless behind him like a shadow enfleshed. The boy glanced back at the others, then stared level at Park.

  —You want me to punch you in the stomach?

  —As hard as you can.

  Park’s expression had gone dead, holding the line of his eyes. The boy turned again, but the others had already stepped forward in expectation.

  —Punch me in the stomach as hard as you can.

  He started in with a tentative jab, as if he expected Park to pull back at the last second. When he saw that Park had not only not flinched but had arched his body forward, he reared in and thrust out his arm. But he didn’t know how to punch, Park thought — he’d held his nail under the curled fingers in his fist, so that a solid blow would break his thumb. All Park felt as he tightened his gut and breathed out sharply was this clumsy thrust of knuckles, barely enough to course through his nerves for a few minutes after.

  The boy stepped back sharply as if to dodge a counter, but Park remained still, hands at his sides. All attention shifted to him as he motioned to the others. The boy who approached next was taller than his companion and didn’t wait for the invitation, swinging in with a hook and striking him in the side. Park felt his flesh bruising already as it absorbed the impact, a brief column of pain rising to the base of his chest.

  —Can I try?

  Park turned his head to the source of the voice and saw a figure leaning against the far edge of the wall, his posture relaxed as if he’d been watching for some time. He looked older than all of them, but in a way that suggested a slight remove, as if he’d been demoted to their level but kept a subtle humor. Park watched him approach. He knew this was Toru.

  —Are you this kid’s boyfriend?

  He gestured to Tomo.

  —Or is he the boyfriend?

  Park looked at him.

  —Not gonna answer me? What’s your name?

  Park told him his Japanese name.

  —Is that right.

  As Toru came closer Park realized why it was difficult for him to look away: it was the first time in his life that he’d seen someone moving like an actor. When his mother and her friends lied to him they did so with oblivious conviction, in a tone of calm reassurance. But all of Toru’s movements — from his set, languorous stride to the too-wide smile stretching his lips — were performed with an open self-consciousness, so that Park felt as if he were watching a sidewinder move towards him from a great distance, transfixed by its awkward motion. The words he used were irrelevant; everything rested on his smile, the movement of his hands.

  —So. Can I try?

  The first punch caught him just above the belt and he recoiled with a strange sucking gasp, as if he were trying to laugh underwater. He tried to time his breathing but Toru struck him again, two sharp punches in succession, and he found himself raising his arms in an absurd, slow, involuntary movement like the wavering branches of an anemone.

  —Can I kick you too?

  A soccer shoe roundhoused into his side and a torrent of grey vomit spattered the pavement. Sunken to the ground, he looked up as Toru kicked him in the shoulder. There was no trace of anger in his eyes; instead he seemed to be extending something, encouraging his part in the drama they were staging. He stretched his shoulders back and arched his arms, as if yawning. Park understood. The younger boys would follow him around, expecting demonstrations of this sort. He was like a young father — something unaccountably tender accompanied the stylized gestures of his hands, his circumspect step as he dodged the pool of vomit. Park felt an almost wifely emotion.

  The shoe landed on the side of his ear and the sharp clap of its pressure seemed to shatter his hearing. He felt other impacts after that, but none of them registered with the same force. His senses seemed to have dulled, or been tuned to some other frequency, so that the looseness in his mouth as his jaw struck the pavement felt like a warm fog filling his head. A fluid was running from somewhere, its heat caressing his lips. His tongue moved over the raw edge of his chipped teeth with a sound like a knife scraping porcelain.

  —Well. See you around.

  He sensed Toru moving away from him, his words barely audible, the sound of his shoes softening to a gentle patter. The echoes of the others followed, distant thuds filling the fog.

  He felt hands pawing at him, tugging his clothes, pushing him onto his back.

  —Are you alright? Park are you alright?

  He moved his arm up to cover the side of his head.

  —Leave me alone.

  The hands pulled his arm aside and the expanse of the dusk sky filled his eyes. Reaching out, he felt something wet. At first he took it to be his own blood, but as he sat up, ignoring the way his muscles seemed to twist into fresh pain with each movement, he saw that the slipperiness between his fingers had a different source: Tomo was crying.

  —Are you alright? Do you want me to call an ambulance?

  Park started to laugh, but the pain in his stomach stopped him.

  —No, just leave me alone for a minute.

  He felt for the wetness around his mouth.

  —Think he fucked up my teeth.

  Tomo moved back but kept his hand resting lightly on Park’s shoulder.

  —Let me see.

  Park lifted his head.

  —They look all right to me...

  —You sure?

  —Well, I mean your mouth is bleeding...

  Park got to his feet and looked down. A trickle of blood stained the collar of his shirt, and his pants were torn and dusty. His mouth, his head, his sides — he could feel bruises forming on them like strange cysts, dormant pain flaring with each turn or touch. But only the looseness of his teeth troubled him.

  —I didn’t say he could hit me in the face.

  —What?

  Tomo had taken out his phone and was tapping in digits. Park waited while he completed the call, wishing for a mirror. He didn’t trust Tomo — at least some of his teeth had to have cracked.

  —Okay she’s gonna be here soon.

  Park looked at him.

  —It’s not really worth it. We could have gotten the next train.

  —They’re not going to let you on the train like that.

  —Like what?

  —You’re bleeding.

  —Yeah, it’s not so bad now.

  Moving slowly, newly sensitive to its resistance against his skin, he sat on the pavement and stretched his legs, facing the direction of the exit ramp several yards beyond the buildings. Twenty minutes later, as he felt his eyes beginning to close, he heard a woman’s footsteps approaching in a neat, straight line. Their steady clack had a distinctive poise, different from Toru’s in its rhythm, but with a similar self-possession. He looked up. She was standing over him, the edges of her suit trailing into a tasteful black skirt, her hair tied back with a clip.

  —So you’re Park, she said.

  —Yeah.

  He looked at Tomo’s mother — Junko, he remembered, that was her name — as she opened her bag and removed the white square of a cotton handkerchief. She folded back a corner and offered it to him.

  —Thanks, I’m fine.

  He pushed her hand aside.

  —Your lip’s swollen.

  She reached down and he expected her to dab the handkerchief at the corner of his mouth, but she placed it instead on his knee. There was a steadiness to her that he’d never seen in Tomo, overlaying a kind of controlled agitation — as she stood up, her eyes moved in the direction of the highway, as if other commitments were calling to her, reminding her of their priority. He looked up and examined her face: thin eyebrows and a narrow nose; minimal makeup; slightly sagging cheeks; a faint purple tinge to her lips; a cleanness striking when seen so close. He could already tell what she thought of him.

  —I’m sorry for making you go out of your way.

  Instead of answering she zipped up her bag and led them back to her car. She told him to sit in t
he front — so she could make sure none of his blood stained the interior. As they rejoined traffic and passed several blocks, he unfolded and refolded the handkerchief, not wanting to ruin it by wiping his mouth. In the back, Tomo was leaning forward anxiously, looking at Park’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. Eventually Junko spoke. She wasn’t a Tokyo native, he realized — the traces of an Osaka accent gave her speech an animated tone, her voice rising or falling at the end of each sentence.

  —I guess you think you’re tough, she said. Getting in fights.

  Her contempt was not unpleasant, and Park almost smiled. Although he remembered a number of childish fights with boys in Gwangju (and a distant memory of an uncle teaching him to hold a knife between his fingers instead of gripping it in his fist, supporting its base with his palm), he considered himself too delicate for not only fighting but activity of any kind. He had no interest in exerting himself. Nothing seemed worth the effort.

  —It completely wasn’t like that, Tomo said. And already he had started, Park thought — embroidering their actions, turning them into victims, relating their role in this brief and meaningless charade as a heroic act of purpose. At first he felt embarrassment, disgust; the special contempt he reserved for the travelling salesmen who sometimes troubled his mother. Nothing should be advertised, defended, or explained, he thought; nothing existed beyond the immediate surface of events, continuous and unbroken. But as Tomo continued he sensed Junko’s withdrawal into a more passive attention that registered only the sounds of the words. She was worried about the car, about getting back to work on time: sensible worries that gave him a gentle sense of his own irrelevance.

  —I’m really sorry. I was just trying to get their attention away from him.

  He affected a contrite look, but she only stared ahead at the road. Still, he felt they were in sympathy, or perhaps it was only that for a moment he sympathized more with her than he did with himself. He tried to think of something to say, but before long he was leaving the car and crossing back to his home, with only a few hours to wash the blood from his shirt before his mother returned.

  From that brief charade, as he always thought of it, had come two years of assumed affinity, Tomo following him to his house and calling him late into the night. It was only on the morning train that he could be alone, pressed against strangers on the first stretch of the commute.

  He opened his eyes and listened for the passengers’ breaths as a voice announced the name of the next station. At this hour a total human density existed in the trains. But even as their bodies touched, all passengers avoided eye contact. The company men slept with their heads nodding against the rails, and as soon as the voice announced their stop they stood up sharply, as if a wire had sparked in their minds. Further on students clustered in groups, adjusting their phones. The train filled; children crowded the doors; sweat veiled the necks of office workers; the sandy head of a tall foreigner bobbed above the crowd.

  Park relaxed into the mindless immobility of a pig sealed in a pen with other pigs. To his left, pressed against his side, an old man gripped the bar, his eyes hooded, a pale blue tint to the lines of his shaven face. In front of him a businesswoman stared over his shoulder, concealer makeup caked on the edge of her lip to cover a cold sore. The dryness of the old man’s cheeks hovered less than a foot away from the pink wet corners of her eyes. Park leaned his head against the overhead bar. Less than five inches separated him from the suited woman’s lips and the loose folds of the old man’s neck. Sealed in its capsule of metal and glass, this collection of human tissue with all its contrasting textures was rushing through space, pregnant with death. He closed his eyes and imagined a terrible collision: the train derailing and striking the side of the station, all passengers shredded, merged, left illegible in the language of flesh, the contrasting surfaces of their skin fused in an instant of perfect love, everyone’s conflicting slices of mind erased like a blackboard, a delicate communion amidst the bones and fluid—

  A familiar sadness overcame him. The train would not derail — that kind of crystalline beauty could only exist in a dream.

  The voice called his station and he got off and walked to Yoyogi Park. Tomo was waiting for him, bag slung over his shoulder, talking to a girl seated on one of the front benches. As he came forward she looked up and he recognized her; her name was Kikuko. She was a short girl, and because she looked like a child all her life no one took her seriously. She made up for this by having controversial opinions, although no one ever asked for them and she was taken for decoration, a resolute resentment smeared on the surface of her mind like gleaming raspberry jam. She’d been friends with Park since they were children; he avoided her whenever possible.

  —Hey.

  Tomo walked over to him.

  —You’re late.

  —I’m always on time, Park said.

  —You ready for class? Kikuko asked.

  —I guess.

  —I’m going to join the archery club, Kikuko said.

  —What’s that?

  —Eriko was telling me that they’re really trying to get new members this year. Hey, do you want to come along with me? You guys should come with me, they’re meeting at four-thirty.

  —I’m not really that into archery, Park said.

  —So? Come with me.

  Park started to walk back to the station. He checked his watch: classes started in another twenty minutes.

  —Are you working tonight? Tomo asked.

  —Yeah.

  Before they reached the edge of the Hanazono grounds he saw a number of other students wearing the uniform. There were a few he recognized from his junior high school classes, but he tried not to make eye contact. He remembered the grounds from a visit last year, especially the central building’s large arched entrance. Hanazono had been a prestigious girls’ high school in the middle of the century, but years of cutbacks had dampened its reputation. It had opened to male students ten years earlier due to falling enrollment rates.

  —All right I’ll see you later I guess, Park said.

  Tomo looked at him.

  —What do you mean?

  —Our homerooms are different, I checked.

  —Oh. Alright, later.

  Park took a letter from the school from his pocket and unfolded it. His homeroom was on the second floor. Already a line of students had crowded the stairway.

  When he looked up again Kikuko was still standing in front of him.

  —So are you going to come with me later or not?

  He folded the letter again and put it away.

  —All right, send me a message when you’re ready.

  He walked to the second floor and found the room, but the door was closed. He checked his watch and saw that he still had another ten minutes.

  Three girls stood outside the room talking. He nodded at them but they ignored him, so he sat on the floor and took a notebook from his bag, pretending to read it while he caught sections of their conversation. Only one of them interested him. Her lips were darker on the outside than on the inside, so that a smaller, pinker smile appeared when she pursed them. Her skin was the color of wild honey, her hair rusted gold. When asked a question she paused and scrunched her mouth to the side and a little hollow appeared in her cheek.

  An electronic beep sounded and all three girls took out their mobile phones. Finding nothing, they looked over at him briefly before returning to their conversation.

  Park took out his phone. There was a message from Tomo, which he deleted without reading.

  •

  At lunch he found a table by the far window and sat by himself, taking out the lunchbox his mother had prepared for him. As he raised a prawn to his mouth, he noticed two third-year girls standing by the window. When they saw him looking they came over.

  —Can we sit here? one of them said, and sat down.

  —Sure.

  He looked at her. She was wearing too much makeup.

  —Are you a first-year..? she ask
ed.

  —Yeah.

  —Oh.

  He picked up another prawn with his chopsticks. He could feel them staring at him, watching him eat. He shifted his legs under the table.

  —What’s your name? the other girl said.

  He told them.

  —I’m Mutsumi, the first girl said.

  —Saya, said the other.

  Mutsumi reached over and took a piece of chicken from Park’s lunchbox.

  —You know, you’re really lucky we’re letting you sit with us, she said.

  —Yeah, Saya said. I mean we usually don’t hang out with first-years.

  He looked at Mutsumi’s face as she stared directly into his eyes. Her lips parted slightly. He wondered how many times she’d been fucked.

  —How come you’re sitting by yourself, don’t you have any friends? Saya asked.

  —My friend’s coming in a little bit.

  —Oh, really? Mutsumi said.

  He took out his phone and looked over his old messages.

  —That phone’s really light, is that Docomo? Mutsumi asked.

  —Softbank.

  —Can I see it?

  He handed it to her and felt her nails brush his hand. They were painted light pink, overlaid with tiny pastel hearts.

  Mutsumi typed something on the keypad and handed the phone back to him.

  —I put my number in.

  She smiled.

  —So you have to send me a message.

  Eventually he saw Tomo coming through the door. Park caught his eye and he came over and sat down. Mutsumi glanced at him, then began talking to Saya rapidly about a girl who’d broken her ankle by tripping in high heels.