Sea of Trees

by James Russell, Robert

  “That is very odd. What time is it?”

  I look at my watch. “Eight-thirty.”

  “It is getting late.”

  “Yes, and if we don’t get back to the main path soon we’re going to be camping out in the woods.”

  She smiles at me then turns and steps toward the hill like she’s ignoring my warning, like it doesn’t mean a thing to her. I lay my head back and try to get comfortable, looking up at the twisted canopy, interlocking branches and blankets of leaves from a variety of trees shielding most of the sky from us, only pockets of gray visible here and there. I look back at Junko and she’s already up the hill some, looking alternately at the ground I stumbled down and the trees I hit as I rolled. “Where are you going?”

  “Looking,” she says. “Just looking.”

  “For what?”

  “For anything.”

  “You’re not going to find anything,” I say propping myself up again, watching her slender legs move with great purpose.

  “You never know,” she says, stops, then squeals excitedly, letting out a giggle like I’ve never heard before.

  “What? What is it?”

  She kneels and comes up, holding something small and brown in her hand, too far away from me to tell what it is. “Do you see this?”

  “No. Bring it here.”

  She’s facing me now, smiling ear-to-ear, just beaming, carefully traipsing down the hill. When she reaches me she kneels and hands me a small clump of what looks like finely-shredded bark. “Do you see?” she says.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is a piece of the stuffed bear. Izumi’s stuffed bear!”

  I look at the brown lump again, inspecting it closer, thinking maybe, however doubtfully, it could be a dirty clump of brown fur. But probably not. “I don’t think this is anything.”

  She grabs it from me and stands, stroking it. “Yes, it is. It is a piece of it. I believe . . .” she stops, looks toward the hill again. “Something is telling me she went up the hill. Out of all the places we could have been, we found her trail!”

  “Junko, you need to stop.”

  “This means that out of all the places we could have been, and Izumi could have been, we found her trail. Do you understand? This is great news.” She’s admiring the clump again, almost giddy, truly believing that we’ve accomplished something here. “It is very clear to me now.”

  “Just stop, okay?”

  “Stop?” She turns back to me, glaring. “Stop what?”

  “That is nothing. It’s a piece of bark or something.”

  “No, I understand now that—”

  “It isn’t a piece of fur, okay? You want it to be, just like you want that hairclip to be hers too, but it’s not. None of this is.”

  She touches the hairclip at my mentioning of it then tucks the brown clump close to her chest. “It is hers. And I think the water is just up the hill. You did not look hard enough.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’d be able to see a big lake.”

  “You did not go far enough. You do not really care about finding anything. Admit it.”

  “At this point, all I care about is leaving these fucking woods.”

  “I knew it,” she says. “I just knew it.”

  “Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you?” I force myself to get up, slowly, putting almost no pressure on my hurt ankle, supporting myself with a nearby tree.

  “Nothing is wrong with me. You are . . . very selfish.”

  “How am I selfish? I’m here, aren’t I? I’ve entertained this ridiculous notion long enough, right? What else do you want me to do?”

  “To understand.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I just can’t. This is all way out of control and we are leaving.”

  “No.” She turns back toward the hill and starts, but as she does I reach out and grab her arm again. She pulls away, hard, knocking me back. “Do not touch me!”

  I trip but manage to keep myself standing on one leg. “Why are you fighting me like this?”

  She looks at me but doesn’t say anything, just turns back toward the hill and starts again. I reach out, intending only to stop her, but fall forward as I grab her backpack this time, putting all my weight into it and pulling her to the ground. She lands, hard, and screams as my weight crushes her tiny frame, hitting me repeatedly and yelling in Japanese words I don’t understand. I finally manage to roll off, breathing heavy and lying on the ground again. She stands and looks at me, then realizes she dropped the clump of fur or whatever and panics, scrambling to her knees, searching until she finds it again. “I cannot believe you would attack me,” she says.

  “I didn’t. I fell.”

  “No, you will do anything to stop me. You are like my parents. You can never understand Izumi and me.” She starts up the hill.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Finishing this,” she says without looking back.

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “Go home, Bill.”

  “Junko, stop.” She doesn’t say anything this time, just keeps hiking the hill, getting further away. My head drops back to the ground and I look back up at the canopy again, noticing it’s gotten darker in the last few minutes. I try to pull myself up but the pain is worse now. After another moment of resting I manage to get up on my good leg and look up to see Junko half-way up the hill, still trudging ahead and not looking back, not seeming to care what happens to me. “Fuck.”

  I hobble toward the hill, only barely touching my bad foot to the ground, grimacing with every step. I drop to my knees and decide to crawl up the hill, watching her ahead of me, following her lead as I pull myself up and finding it much easier to move like this. I stop every so often to catch my breath, feeling like she’s getting further away and I won’t catch up at all. And suddenly I’m remembering how we met on campus, running into her as she was handing out fliers for some sort of research project she was working on with some other psychology students. I only went so I could see her, talk to her some more. And I remember how awkward our first date was, but how we seemed to just click after, how everything just seemed to be . . . right.

  I look back up the hill, equally confused and distraught by the events, and watch as she disappears over the crest, out of sight. “Junko?” I wait a minute and don’t hear anything back so I start moving faster, as best I can.

  Then, after a few more paces forward, my hands raw from pulling myself along, I hear her: “Bill!”

  “Junko? What is it? Are you okay?”

  I start crawling again and stop as Junko appears at the crest of the hill, looking down at me and waving her arms excitedly. “I . . . saw something,” she says. “A light, almost like a figure. I think it was her.”

  “Her?”

  “Izumi. She moved up ahead, into the woods.”

  I freeze. “What do you mean?”

  “I saw something, I think it was her. I think . . . she’s telling me to come and follow her.”

  “Junko, you need to stop. Wait for me.”

  She smiles at me from the top of the hill and blows me a kiss. “I have to go now.”

  “Junko?” I ask, still frozen in place, alarmed by this, watching as she gives me a final look then disappears over the hill.

  I crawl faster now, the pain in my ankle dulled, my head spinning as I try to figure out what’s going on. By the time I reach the top I stand, slowly, looking around, but don’t see Junko anywhere. “Hello?” I look back down the hill then to the pieces of sky breaking through the trees and realize it’s already past dusk, my eyes adjusting to the quickly spreading darkness. I don’t hear anything, don’t see any way she could have gone.

  Then, amidst the quiet, I hear her shout: “The water, Bill! I hear the water!”

  I move forward then stop, realizing I need to put ribbons in place, even if it’s going to get dark soon. My hands are shaking as I take my pack off and I notice it’s already open. I rummage for the ribbons and don�
�t find them and figure my pack must’ve unzipped when I fell on Junko, when she struggled to get me off her. I hobble back to the hill and look down, squinting to see: near the bottom, the small stack of yellow ribbons smiles at me, lying in stark contrast to the dark forest floor.

  I take a step toward the hill and feel a jolt of pain in my swollen ankle, the pain moving up my leg from all the pressure I’ve put on it. I look back to the woods, unsure of what to do, realizing there’s not enough time to get the ribbons and find Junko. As I stand here contemplating, I hear her voice once again, quieter now, further away.

  “I’m coming!” I zip up my pack and even though I know I should just stay and wait here until morning, I take a large step forward and limp in the direction of Junko’s voice.

  Isi and Huyu could not believe such a book existed—an entire manual devoted to the methods and means of suicide—and even more so, they could not believe such a book was readily available to buy. But once they had it the two boys became obsessed with it, with what it preached—that suicide was noble, even honorable, something not to be looked down upon at all, an individual choice that was neither illegal nor against any national religion in Japan. Initially it was the draw of the macabre that danced in their heads—for instance, they had no idea before reading the book that there were so many different means of suicide—but the more they read on the internet, the more curious they became. They would meet at one another’s homes after school and research feverishly, discovering the existence of internet suicide cults: groups of people that would commit suicide together, advocating that it did not have to be a solitary act at all, but something shared by like-minded individuals. Even more intriguing was that some people were adamant that group suicides presented a sort of illumination at the very end of life, before it was all over, that was otherwise impossible to experience in the world.

  The boys weren’t particularly lonely or depressed, but they were bored, so this new passion of theirs took a hold of their lives above all else. As they built their courage they would print articles of group suicides that had been successful—most recently, nine found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a van—analyzing what went right and what went wrong, consulting the suicide manual to determine which method would be the most ideal. They joined chatrooms and talked to others like them that had become enamored with this idea, discussing alternative means and the most ideal locations, finding many were as young as them, if not younger. It became to these cultists less about the need to end their lives and more of an ideology, something their parents and elders and the generations before them could never understand, the most exclusive of clubs—and that, in itself, was reason enough to entertain such notions.

  The more they prepared and talked with their new friends—who they oftentimes were invited to join, but declined out of fear, as they were not quite yet ready—the more they withdrew themselves from the real world. Finally, after an online friend of theirs—a girl who called herself Coco—joined a group who died by charcoal burner, the boys decided it was their time to join those who had gone bravely before. So they split their tasks—Isi would take his mother’s sleeping medication while Huyu would find plastic bags—and they left the watchful eye of their friends and families and their well-to-do neighborhoods to head for Aokigahara where they could die in peace, uninterrupted in order to fully experience the enlightenment. They had had many offers, almost daily, to join other groups—one in particular that same day, again with charcoal burners, was especially appealing—but the boys wanted to limit any outside factors that could, similarly, prevent them from going through with it. They sent their goodbye messages to their online friends via their phones, all of which were greeted with enthusiasm or jealousy in being strong enough to do it, to be part of this righteous cause, and when they arrived finally at Aokigahara, so proud of themselves and what they would do, they practically beamed.

  In the forest they began taking Isi’s mother’s pills in order to dull their reflexes, and marched through the dark woods with great resolve and purpose until their eyes grew heavy and they knew it was time. They picked a spot and sat cross-legged, across from one another, giggling and talking about what they expected to find on the other side, how great it would be to join their friends and be a part of something so wonderful, and, as night fell, they placed plastic bags on the other’s head, holding it tight at the end, promising each other they would never let go and finding the strength in one another they knew they would not have individually.

  Blackness soon came to them and took them over and they struggled some, naturally, trying to remove the other’s hand from around the end of the plastic, weak from the pills and unable to do anything, their eyes never straying from one another, looking out onto the world through the foggy plastic as they had never seen it before.

  Freedom

  Night comes fast and I can barely see anything now: some bluish light from the moon shining between bare patches of the treescape and not much else. I stop and fish around in my pack for the tiny flashlight we picked up at a convenience store on a whim, one of those ones that clips onto your keychain. I find it and turn it on, searching the woods immediately in front of me, and find nothing but more trees and craggy, uneven earth again. “Junko!” I say again, louder this time. Still nothing. I start forward, my ankle swollen twice its normal size now, and lean against another tree as I stop to catch my bearings. I wait and listen, realizing I’ve never been so alone in a place so quiet, but my nerves, the worry I have for Junko, finding her in this maze, all of that masks any sort of fear I’d otherwise be feeling.

  “Can you hear me?” I call again, moving forward slowly. “My ankle hurts really bad, and . . . I’m scared, Junko.” I pause. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  I move again, faster now, headed in what I think is a straight line, but I can’t be sure. I move past a row of very thin trees and down a small embankment, over some sort of small creek, the only water we’ve seen so far. I stop to study it, watching as it disappears in both directions into the blackness. It barely makes a noise as if it’s been muted like everything else here. On the other side I manage to climb back up from the water and hear a bird cry again. I jump and shine the flashlight up into the trees and can’t tell if it’s the same bird as before, or if it’s even a bird at all, so I continue again, still looking for whatever made that noise, unaware the forest floor suddenly drops off. I lose my footing and fall hard, on a succession of rocks, screaming mostly out of fright, until I land on a patch of cold dirt. I blink myself into cohesion, flashlight still in-hand, and shine it around—I’m in some sort of small riverbed, bigger than the creek from before, the opposite bank so steep that I hurt just thinking about climbing out. I manage to stand and find cuts on my hands and arms as I brush myself off, all of them stinging now in harmony.

  Along the lip of the opposing bank I see nothing but a series of thick and tangled trees, branches spreading from the bases, and I wonder how I’ll force my way through once I get up there. And then, out of nowhere, I see Junko, standing between the trees, only the light from my flashlight and the tiniest glimmer from the moon illuminating her: her back is facing me and she starts laughing, that odd giggle again. When I see her, when I realize what I’m looking at, I jump back, nearly falling but catching myself before I do.

  “Junko!”

  “She is so beautiful,” she says quietly, running a hand through her hair, still facing away.

  “Are you okay? I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I missed you,” she says, then disappears into the trees.

  “No, don’t go . . . ,” I say, walking slowly toward the other side of the riverbed, realizing she’s gone again. “Fuck, fuck.”

  I hobble over and up the bank and hike up, finding a less cluttered section of trees at the top that I force my way through. “Junko?” Nothing. I move forward, slowly, my feet silent. I stop and realize this part of the woods smells different, more fragrant. Up ahead I see the tree line thinning out so
I keep moving, my breathing hard, the flashlight going all over the place, finding it difficult to keep it steady. After another ten minutes I spill out into a clearing overlooking a large black lake: Saiko.

  I’m in awe of the size of it, and in the distance, beyond the lake, I can see the top of Mt. Fuji, capped in white even in the dark of night. A beacon. I can’t help but smile that even after everything, we actually did find the water. But my smile breaks when I see Junko again, standing at the edge of the overlook, which, from what I can tell, shoots straight down to the water below. She’s holding her backpack in her hand. It’s the first time she hasn’t been wearing it since we arrived this morning.

  I step toward her. “You were right. We found the water.”

  “It is very beautiful, even in the night.” She turns her head slightly, looking back at me over her shoulder, her face blank. “Thank you for coming with me today, Bill.”

  “Yeah, of course.” I pocket the flashlight, the moon brighter here without the tree canopy keeping it from reaching us. My hands start shaking from the cold of the night and I clench my fingers into fists every so often to keep them working properly. “Are you okay?”

  “Mhm,” she says turning back toward the lake.

  “I really am sorry about everything today.” Silence. I take a few steps toward her and feel my ankle throb again, the pain shooting up my leg. I stop and look at the backpack in Junko’s hand. “Are you going to make a shrine here?”

  “I can hear her in the woods,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” I step closer. “Maybe you should move away from the edge. It looks like a long fall.”

  “I can see that this is where she spent her time. At the end.”

  “How do you know?”

  She touches the clip still in her hair. “And now . . . we will be together.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about? Please, can you step back a bit? You’re making me nervous.”