Sayuri timidly started talking to her daughter. “Didn’t...you throw this TV away?” she asked.
“No,” her daughter explained, “because you said that I could have it.”
I might have said that Sayuri thought. Although, she had meant that her daughter should throw it away.
Her daughter was staring at the broken TV, which was decorating the altar, with a passion. This scene— which would give one cause to doubt her daughter’s sanity— worried Sayuri, and she placed her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Then, she noticed something and was relieved: there were baby birds in the nest inside the TV, and they were crying. They had hatched from the eggs that she had found inside when they’d first cracked it open. Sayuri had thought that they were definitely rotten, but apparently she was wrong. Her daughter had warmed them, and gotten them to hatch. Or maybe she had gotten new eggs to hatch, or even actual baby birds from somewhere else, because the eggs really had been rotten?
Sayuri wasn’t sure of the details, but it looked like her daughter was using the TV as a birdcage, and was raising the chicks. Sayuri remembered doing something similar when she was young, although only at the level of placing a nesting box in the backyard and watching the birds that gathered. The hollowed out TV was nothing more than a box at this point, so it made some sense to use it as a nesting box.
Her daughter, whose thoughts Sayuri could never understand, had taken in and was attempting to raise life. Such a thing warmed Sayuri’s heart. That girl must also have love inside of her. This would be a good experience for her, Sayuri thought.
“Those birds,” said Sayuri, “are you raising them? What do they eat?” Depending on the situation, Sayuri was thinking of helping, so she asked. But, expecting her daughter to get mad, she did so with an upward look, like she was slightly ashamed of asking.
“B-book. I researched about it in a book,” her daughter said. “So it should be fine, can I be allowed to raise them?”
“Sure,” Sayuri told her. “I gave you this TV completely, with the birds inside and all.” Feeling happy, Sayuri laughed. Stroking her daughter’s head once, she turned back towards the cabin in order to make dinner. She kind of felt like making a feast today.
“MY ENEMY’S INVISIBLE, I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIGHT.” Startled, Sayuri stiffened up before turning around. Once again, she heard someone singing.
Now that she thought about it, she still hadn’t figured out what was causing that music. She was too busy being happy because she’d seen a new side of her daughter. What’s this song, and who is singing it? Sayuri needed to find the source of the noise that painfully rang in her ears. Trembling, Sayuri looked at her daughter. She was no longer paying any attention to her mother, instead staring heatedly at the TV.
Raising her arms, Sayuri’s daughter formed a symbol with her fingers that seemed almost religious. That wasn’t it. She was holding something in her hands; it was earthworms, which are often found in farming fields. She was going to feed them to the chicks. Usually this sort of thing creeps girls out, but she was handling them with no hesitation while she fed the chicks.
The baby birds were crying desperately for food. The chicks’ cries probably mixed together, creating the song-like melody that Sayuri’s brain interpreted as words. It would be great if it really was just an abnormal phenomenon, and that she was just having auditory hallucinations.
Her daughter noticed Sayuri’s gaze. Turning around, she put on a troubled face. “It’s pretty hard, adjusting the musical intervals. I can’t sing it very well,” she said with an embarrassed smile, as if it was obvious. Then, she went on singing: “THE TREMBLING FEAR IS MORE THAN I CAN TAKE.”
“Truthfully, I’d like to sing more like this,” Sayuri’s daughter remarked, before she raised her voice along with the birds. Their singing voices entwined, reverberating off of each other.
Sayuri trembled violently. She had purposefully kept her daughter away from music, because she had awful memories of it. She never even sung her daughter any lullabies, but this world is overflowing with music. The town is filled with it. Someone is always playing music, that either they or someone else had made, and Sayuri couldn’t go around plugging her ears forever. Even these mountains are filled with the sounds of nature: the cries of birds, bugs, and beasts; the sound of the wind, and the rustling of leaves; the sound of sirens one would occasionally hear from the town. All of that must have built up in her daughter.
“—WHEN I’M UP AGAINST THE ECHO IN THE MIRROR,” her daughter sang. Countless sounds jumped about and echoed. Agitating the rotten eggs, the chicks inside the CRT TV raised a strange cry.
The altar of junk, enshrined behind Sayuri’s daughter, reflected the light of the sunset. It backlit her outline in a fantastical manner, but her head was the shape of a square, a TV. She had several arms growing, here and there. She looked like a monster, or a foreign god of some sort.
The thing that should have been Sayuri’s daughter, that she took great pains to give birth to...
“ECHO!” With her whole body dyed black with shadow, Sayuri’s daughter continued to sing like a broken machine.