Sea of Trees

by James Russell, Robert

  “There are people in the woods all the time, searching and looking. We would not be lost for long.”

  I’m angry now, annoyed, so I stand and pace, hands flailing. “Everything we’ve heard about this place, all the ghosts, all the stories . . . do you really want to end up like Izumi? Come here and never leave?”

  I stop, breathing heavy, and realize what I said. I look over at Junko who’s watching me, terrified and hurt.

  “How could you say that?” she asks.

  “I’m . . . sorry,” I say, but she turns away from me and darts toward the woods, crying hard. “Hey, where are you going?” I wait for a response, hoping she’ll turn around, but she doesn’t. I wait a moment longer, but still there’s nothing, so I shout after her: “I’m not going in after you. You have to come back eventually.”

  I jam the rest of my granola bar in my mouth and chomp loudly, sloppily. Minutes go by and all I can think about is leaving, waiting for Junko to come back, dragging her to the car and pretending like this never happened. Finishing this fucking crusade of hers. And then suddenly, amongst the silence, I hear it: a scream. Junko’s scream. I leave my pack and dart into the trees, squeezing through narrow trunks and branches, feeling something scratch my neck as I move. I step over jutted pieces of the black lava rock, shouting her name, telling her I’m on my way and following her cries up a series of small hills and back down again until I find her in a small clearing surrounded by bigger rocks, kneeling in the dried leaves and groundcover, her pale skin glowing amongst the gray-brown backdrop, her hands covering her face.

  “Are you alright?” I ask, panting as I approach down a narrow path in the rock. She remains in place, kneeling and crying hard. “What is it? Are you okay?”

  She peels her hands away from her face, cheeks flushed and her eyes red. “There,” she whispers, pointing in front of her.

  I look and see one of the larger faces of rock, about ten feet tall with trees growing on top, tan-colored roots cascading down like fingers. And there, hanging flat against it, a body suspended from a rope slung over one of the trees atop, a noose tied tight around his neck. “Holy shit . . .” I say, stepping back, leaning against a nearby tree for support.

  “I . . . came down here and saw . . . it,” she says. “I . . . oh, God . . .”

  “It’s okay.” I help her up and hug her, turning her away from the body: male, early thirties, cheeks and eyes sunken like it’s been here a while. He’s wearing a blue parka and jeans and there’s a large backpack at his feet, which are hovering only a foot or so above the ground.

  “How . . . do you do that to yourself?” she asks still holding on to me, peeking up from my chest as I begin to lead us back the way I came.

  “He probably jumped from the top of the rock. Broke his neck or something,” I say.

  “It is horrible.”

  “I know.” We start navigating the woods back toward the path, making sure not to look back, only at the trees ahead of us. “I’m sorry about before, at the trail. I know we’re both acting a bit weird here, but I just . . . I care for you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “But I need you to understand that I cannot leave here without finding something of hers. Anything.”

  “Well, we’ll do what we can,” I say, kissing the top of her head.

  “Thank you. That is all I want.”

  We walk a bit longer, Junko tucked under my arms, so small next to me. I look back every so often, watching as the trees grow thicker, hiding that place of death from us. The image of the man in blue burns in my mind and I wonder how it’s possible to have so much beauty surrounded by so much death.

  Haruka had wanted to die in Paris during fashion week, but it was not to be. With a busier schedule than usual, as well as a speaking engagement regarding Asian women in the fashion industry, she had no time to herself to accomplish the feat. So, as it had for many years, the desire to end her life faded for the time being as she walked the catwalk in high-end wear, attended parties and galas studded with film and television celebrities, was treated as if she, simply a girl from Japan, mattered in the grand scheme of things—and she bought into it, as she always did.

  Tall and glamorous, it wasn’t hard for Haruka to find things to occupy her time, sinful cordials of various sorts—drugs, men and women. But these high times were matched with low lows, periods of great unease where the burden of being the new “it” girl weighed heavily on her, and that one day her looks would fade—and everything that she had based her young existence on would be gone along with them. During these times she retreated to her apartment in Tokyo, alone, reading and writing poetry, posting on her blog and looking, desperately, for a connection, for someone to tell her that there was something noble about what she did. These times of solitude never lasted long, though: her popularity kept her phone ringing with jobs, e-mails crashing in by the hundreds, everyone who wanted a piece of her while she was still very much “it,” and this pressure, this constant need she would feel to make everyone happy, to be very much the life of the party, ate away at her. She was a ghost, she decided: seen but not heard.

  Haruka’s most recent self-exile—back in Tokyo for three months before a six-week North American excursion filled with higher-profile jobs than she had previously been offered—seemed exceptionally discouraging to her: the busier she became, the more overworked she was, the more disenchanted she found herself. She wrote feverishly, lines of poetry, vague musings on the meaning of existence and what the point of it all was, declining lunch dates with friends and dinner dates with would-be suitors. She even contemplated that she more than likely suffered from some sort of severe depression, but it had gone unnoticed, forever, perhaps because no one wanted to look further than her splendid features, that no one wanted to believe someone like her, a true beauty, could be so flawed.

  During this time, between regular Ambien-induced naps—the only way she was able to truly shut out the world—Haruka, in an attempt to make sense of her existence, of the very state of her constant unease, tried piecing together a timeline of when she began feeling like everything was so pointless, trying to pinpoint how and why it would have started. And during her subconscious digging she unceremoniously realized it had always been there like a pit inside her—that she could remember ever not feeling this way. This realization was a comfort to her, of all things, knowing this was part of her, that, perhaps, she had been broken since birth, and like that, a wave washing over her, the desire to end it all returned, but with less malice than before. Haruka, for the first time, saw this inevitable ending as her destiny—what she had been born to do. Others would work and have families, do things that inspire, but she, the current envy of the fashion world, the girl everyone wanted a piece of, would shine bright and then, suddenly, be gone, making the world a better place without her in it—and for the first time in a long while, it all made sense.

  So Haruka wrote one last cryptic entry on her blog entitled “Hello, Forever”, gathered the rest of her Ambien and some Zopiclone she had been given by a friend in Berlin, packed a light bag and pinpointed to the hailed taxi driver that Aokigahara was her destination. The drive was expensive—not that it mattered—but shorter than she had thought it would be. She told the driver when he dropped her that she was meeting a friend, so as not to raise suspicion, and he happily took her tip and zoomed off back toward civilization. In the forest she took the first dose of pills, admiring the trees, reaching out to touch the knotty bark and twisted limbs that fell near the path, and marveled at the quiet of the place, that even the birds seemed to stay away from this place of death—a solitude she had never felt before.

  She moved deeper into the woods, studying everything from the dark rock formations and the path at her feet to the signs pleading for those thinking of ending their life to rethink and turn back. She swallowed pills at first by the pair, then in groups of four and finally, an hour and a half into her trek, finding it harder to keep going, her limbs reacting sluggishl
y to her thoughts, the pills taking effect, she finished the last of them—eighteen in total, she thought, or perhaps nineteen. She could feel the sleep take hold of her, more forceful now, the warmth of her very last moments on earth, and she found a spot up a small hill a ways form the main path, a place of solitude for her, and lay down, admiring the scene around her, wondering how long until they had forgotten her—not long, she figured—and how better they would all be after she was gone. And, for the first time in as long as she could remember, as her eyes shut and the world went black around her, Haruka smiled.

  Promise

  The large wooden sign staked along the path is half-gone, torn almost in two, some graffiti written on the in-tact part which Junko tells me says “There is no God. There is no hope.” I ignore her and trace my finger along what’s left of the color map, along the path we’re on, and figure, round-about, where we are.

  “Here,” I say, pointing.

  Junko steps forward and motions to a large blue area on the map, north from where we are. There’s no path headed in that direction, just the color green to indicate forest between it and us. “And here is Saiko.”

  “Yeah, but no path going there. Not from here, anyway.”

  We both study the sign again, red Kanji scrawled along one side, the ominous warnings again reminding any who read it that they are loved and that they should turn back. It looks so far back to the parking lot where we started, and here we are, about half-way around the large loop of the main path. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say. “I think we got on the wrong path.”

  “How is that?”

  “I think when we were at the fork we must’ve gone the wrong way. See?” I point to the board again, showing her a small path mostly cut off from the broken sign and how it loops around near the lakeshore. “I’m sorry.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  “Not without backtracking the last few hours, and we don’t have time for that,” I say. “Say what you want, but we’re not staying here after dark.”

  She ignores me. “I do not believe it. These woods . . . there are many paths. Many people visit here.”

  “None of this is for tourists,” I say raising my hand and pointing to the surrounding woods, to the limp streamers of yellow tape hanging broken from the trees at intervals, warning us not to go any further, that there’s nothing good ahead. “It’s for people looking for bodies, like us. And those Suicide Squads or whatever. This isn’t a national park, not like what you’re thinking.”

  She ignores me and goes back to the sign, looking through the spray-painted graffiti, hoping to find some clairvoyance in the worn, splintered wood. “We have to try,” she says finally.

  “Try what?”

  “If we cut through here, it is a short distance to the lake, yes?”

  “In theory, yes, but there’s no trail.”

  “I understand, but we . . . we could use those ribbons,” she says excitedly, pulling on my arm. “And I promise to you, Bill, that we will go there, to the lake, and come right back. I just . . . need to see it, the water.”

  “I know, you’ve said that, but you don’t know what we’ll find, if anything.”

  She steps back and looks at me directly for what seems like the first time. “I understand that I may never find anything of hers. That . . . she is gone to me. I do understand that. But at the very least I can make a hokura to her, a place I can come back to visit. I cannot come this far and do . . . nothing.”

  I look back to the sign, then at Junko: her lips full and red, inviting, her eyes pleading, beautiful, and for the first time in a long while I feel passion, I remember why I told her I would come with her in the first place. “If we do this,” I say stepping toward her and running my hand through her hair, “then we have to use the ribbons, make sure we don’t get lost.”

  “Yes,” she says hugging me, arms slung around my neck. “Of course.”

  “And I’m serious. We get to the lake, you do what you have to, and then we leave, okay?”

  “Yes, I understand. Thank you, Bill.”

  Junko kisses me on the lips and for a moment we fall into each other, pulling each other close, everything else disappearing around us until, a moment later, she comes to and pulls away from me, shy and nervous again. “Th-thank you,” she says softly, looking away.

  I pull the ribbons from my pack and separate them into pieces, counting off a handful and putting the rest away. We drink some water in silence as I study the sign again, wondering how long it will actually take to get to the lake from here. By the time we’re ready we’ve been here for almost twenty minutes, preparing ourselves and figuring out exactly what our plan will be, deciding that she’ll lead, me walking behind to place the ribbons. And as we make our way into the woods, for the first time since we’ve been here, I hear a bird call, a sweet whistle echo throughout the woods, and look up to see a lonely black bird flying overhead, almost like he’s talking to us.

  “Look,” I say grabbing Junko’s arm and motioning up. “That’s the first animal we’ve seen since we’ve been here.”

  We watch it dance on the branches of a tree, sing some more, then fly away, still singing. “A good sign,” she says.

  “I hope so.”

  We start again toward the woods and make our way under a strand of yellow tape tied between two small trees, all noise of the outside world, the bird’s song and the small breezes—everything, completely vanishing the moment we do, which is so jarring I have to catch my breath and remind myself that we haven’t just crossed into some other dimension. I tie the first ribbon on a tree within sight of the large sign, making sure it’s high enough so we can easily see it as we make our way back. I smile at Junko as I catch her looking at me.

  “Are you ready?” she asks.

  “I guess.”

  She leads us into the familiar landscape of jagged and toothy rocks, small inclines and valleys, through the endless gray-brown of the trees themselves, some with roots popped up and exploding in all directions, most of the trees thin, branches starting at the ground or halfway up making it, at times, hard to see too far ahead. We continue like that for about forty minutes and I tie a ribbon every fifty feet or so, making sure the previous one is still in eyesight. As we move I marvel at the quiet of the woods, how it blocks any and all noise out, and watch Junko, the scout on this part of the journey, staying steadily ahead of me, looking at everything, constantly searching and calculating.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, but maybe we can stop for some water?” Junko pauses, stretching her legs on two rocks into an a-frame, wiping her forehead clean. I can’t help but look at her body, hungry.

  “Sure.”

  I set my pack down and pull out my water bottle and drink. Junko does the same but quickly puts it away and begins looking around us, kneeling in areas and raking her hand through the fallen leaves, still looking for a something. Anything. I sigh, loudly, probably an attempt to let her know I’m not nearly as amused as she is, but she doesn’t hear me, or pay attention, I’m not sure which. I kick my shoes along the ground through a clump of leaves and somehow in the midst of my actions, kicking things in little piles, I uncover a small, black hairclip.

  “Hey,” I say picking it up and showing it to Junko. “I found a hairclip.”

  She rushes over and takes it from me, looking at it, her lips twisting into a smile, one of those a-ha smiles like things are starting to come together. “Izumi!” is all she says.

  “What about her?”

  She flips the hairclip around in her fingers, inspecting every side before answering me. “This was Izumi’s hairclip!”

  “Uh, how do you know that?”

  “She always wore one just like this, since we were girls. I used to wear a white hairclip and she wore a black one. Always.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know that’s hers.”

  “Why not? It is possible she came this way too.”

  “Sure, but I
imagine black hairclips are really popular, though, right? I mean, this could belong to anyone.”

  “No, I am sure this was hers.” Junko looks at me beaming, and then places the clip in her hair along her temple.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, slightly disgusted.

  “This is . . . this is a great discovery. I really think we are going to find more.”

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for you to put that in your hair. You really don’t know—”

  “It is hers, okay?” She turns away from me. “I believe she came this way, to the lake.”

  “But we’re only here by accident, remember? Look, I’m all for helping you explore, but the chances of us finding her trail, the exact way she came . . . it’s not likely.”

  “But I believe this is a sign. She wore the same clip.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Can you agree it is at least possible we could find Izumi’s path?”

  “It’s possible, I guess, but the chances are, like—”

  “I understand, Bill, but it is possible. And of all the places we could be, we are on a path to the water, and that is where you found not just any hairclip, but the exact one she wore. Do you not see what I am saying? I believe . . . we are going in the right direction. That we will find more of her.”

  “Okay,” I say quietly, slowly, starting to worry about Junko as she begins scanning the trees again, looking for more things that could be Izumi’s but probably aren’t. “But have you thought about what happens if we actually find her?”

  “What do you mean?” she says turning back to me.

  “I mean . . . her body.”

  “Oh, well, I have thought of it, yes. I would like,” she says, losing herself in the thought, then, forcing a smile, awkward and nervous: “I have it all planned out.”

  I smile back and look at my watch: it’s nearly six. “I wonder how much further. We should have been there by now.” I look at Junko who’s back to her scouting, looking at the forest around us. “Hey, did you hear me? I really think we need to think about our game plan—”