Maki Kashimada: Touring the Land of the Dead: Two Novellas

I was still the only one who could see through it all. I was still the only one who could see that Yōko was fed up with that guy. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell anyone. How even though she’s fed up with him, she trembles with fear at the very thought of breaking up with him. I had no idea, none whatsoever, how to put that contradiction into words.

But Meiko just kept going on and on about how happy Yōko would be once she married him. He’ll be a great film director one day, don’t you think? That was all she talked about. Mom says he’s taking advantage of her, but there’s no way that could be true. She’s just investing for the future. I mean, it’s unthinkable, right? This idea of Yōko supporting some useless guy. That isn’t her. She’s always been able to see through people, always been able to size them up, even when she was just a kid.

Meiko just doesn’t know the truth. About men and women. About sex and love. But she’s fine that way. I mean, I don’t really know much about them either. And I don’t want to. Meiko’s fine not knowing what Yōko’s going through. Because love with some outsider—for Meiko, that’s out of the question. I alone would violate her, in my mind. I would make her mine. Because she’s a good woman, with a noble character that would be completely wasted on someone like S.

One day, Yōko invited me to go with her to Hanake, just the two of us. We ordered the jumbo gyōza , and even though it wasn’t the season for it, some shaved ice too. They do shaved ice at Hanake all year round. I’ve been keeping this place a secret from S, Yōko told me. I don’t know why exactly, but I felt like I wanted to protect it, to at least keep this place safe, or something like that. We go to the Pomegranate whenever we come to Yanaka. After a while, I just couldn’t keep going past the Dandanzaka steps at the end of the street anymore, you know?

Our jumbo gyōza arrived, a plate for each of us.

They’re so huge, Yōko exclaimed. Were they always this big? I mean, we’ve been coming here ever since we were kids, right? So if anything, they should feel smaller, don’t you think? But they just seem to keep getting bigger and bigger.

There were five on each plate, but we ended up leaving two untouched on each of them. All of a sudden, Yōko broke out into a laugh. It looks like we would have been fine ordering just one plate. We pretty much always end up with a full serving left, don’t we?

We left the restaurant, and made our way down the Dandanzaka steps hand in hand. Yōko’s soft palm enveloped mine. It was just like I remembered, just like when I was a kid. But I couldn’t help but feel as if something inside me had changed.

As I wondered what exactly it could be, I felt a strange numbness in the corner of my eye. Before I knew it, that numbness had disappeared, and in its place a tear was running down my cheek.

I hugged Yōko close. Yōko hugged me back. You’re afraid, aren’t you? she said to me. I myself didn’t know whether that was the case. But Yōko is so perceptive. She could no doubt read my emotions better than I ever could.

Yōko’s voice, that warm, kind voice that had realized that I was afraid, gradually became tearful. I looked up at her. I felt a sudden urge to kiss her, to push my lips up against her own. To kiss her, the way that lovers kissed. I didn’t know why I wanted to do it. And I knew that I shouldn’t. But I didn’t understand why that was either. It should have been fine for these irrational thoughts that I had for my three sisters to come to the fore. I mean, I’ve felt this way for so long that they all ought to have realized it by now. One day, they’ll return my feelings. That’s what I should have been thinking. But as we stood there like that, as Yōko held me and I held her, for some strange reason I found myself hesitating.

And then it occurred to me. These emotions, this sense of fear, they had all arisen from the realization that I shouldn’t kiss her. This time of my life when I could do anything, this age of innocence, was for me, it seemed, nearing its end.

Tears rolled down my cheeks, one after the other. If I had actually kissed my sisters, I thought, surely I would have cried even harder. But no, I knew that wasn’t true. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kiss them. And now, I knew, that was precisely why I was crying so wretchedly.

I stood there for the longest time, tears running down my face. Yōko offered me that peach-colored handkerchief of hers. It was so soft, and smelled so nice. She wasn’t using it to attract men. Now, she was handing it to me, her little sister possessed with such obscene thoughts, as if to heal me. She’s cunning, and men, for some reason, find her especially attractive. But looking at her now, what I saw wasn’t that side of her, nor was it a woman for whom men would fall head over heels. She was just her normal self. And yet, she was able to heal me. She’s so strong, I thought. If she had been an average woman, if she had ended up becoming average at the hands of some man, that charm of hers would have completely vanished. But Yōko was different.

Moeko asked me to go with her to Eigakan. I felt a strange incongruity at that. What on earth could have been going through her mind? I mean, Eigakan had always been Mom’s territory.

She ordered a glass of rum, I some lemonade. Neither of us was in the mood for a Denki Bran.

“There’s something that I’ve been wanting to show you all day. That’s why I suggested we come here,” Moeko said, before passing me a small photo album. It was filled with pictures of me as a baby with my three young sisters.

“When you were born, we were all so happy. But you know, Yōko was especially thrilled. She must have been so pleased to finally have a sister younger than herself. She was the one who named you. Nanako .”

Yōko always wanted a younger sister, someone who looked like her, Moeko said. Us sisters, we all look alike, and even our names are similar. It was Yōko who first realized that.

I flicked through the album. I came across a picture of Moeko straddling Yōko. Just as Moeko had pressed her breasts, one of her erogenous zones, against me, I found myself imagining that, in the picture, she was rubbing another one, her clitoris, against Yōko.

Hey, Nanako, do you think Yōko’s okay? Moeko asked. Is it really okay for her to be in love with that stranger? She was talking about Yōko sleeping with S. It was the kind of question that shouldn’t have needed asking.

Moeko. My headstrong sister, who even as a kid, knowing that a woman’s erogenous zone is her clitoris, rubbed herself against her younger sisters. Even she was afraid of having a physical relationship with a stranger.

No, that wasn’t right, I corrected myself. It was precisely because we’re sisters that she could rub her erogenous zones against us. She wouldn’t be able do that with a stranger, maybe not even with a man from around our own neighborhood.

Moeko was saying that her mind and her body were the same. Maybe she was trying to tell us that she loved us sisters more than she could ever love a man, just like I did. And that she would do with us the kind of things that men and women do with each other.

Hey, Nanako, I really do love you all, Moeko said, grasping my hand.

Moeko, unable to express her feelings of love, unsure what to do with her body, was trying the only way she knew how to put those feelings into words. I felt that, until now, I had only ever seen her from behind. No matter what happened, she had always kept moving forward. She had never faltered. But now, I could reach out and touch that kindness of hers. And she looked back, and embraced me. I could feel the warmth of her delicate affection pressing against my skin.