Yet even after they returned home, Noriko still seemed pensive and on edge. He suspected she was upset with him somehow, judging from her reproachful gaze.
“Is something wrong?” he finally asked.
“What happened out there?” she replied.
“I already told you: I was injured while we were trying to disarm a bomb. It’s really as simple as that.”
“Liar. You’re hiding something from me, aren’t you?”
Koichi faltered a moment at this incisive accusation.
“I could always tell, you know,” she said, “that there was something bothering you deep down. Something you weren’t telling me. Does this have something to do with that?”
This was quickly becoming a full-blown interrogation.
“What is it that you’re so…so tormented by?” she asked.
“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with,” he replied, raising his voice despite himself. But this only incited an even greater surge of emotion from Noriko.
“How can you say that?” she asked. “You saved my life, gave me a place to stay, and we’ve been living together for more than a year—and now you’re telling me I’m still such a stranger to you that you can’t even let me in a little bit?”
There was nothing he could say to this.
“If there’s some secret burden you’ve been shouldering,” she continued, “I wish you’d at least share it with me so that I could lighten your load a little.”
Koichi was desperate to find some way to escape from this situation—but he could tell from the intensity of Noriko’s gaze that there was no getting out of this.
“I was a kamikaze pilot,” he confessed. “A deserter who abandoned his mission.”
“You…what?” said Noriko.
“On the day I was sortied,” he said, “I lied and claimed my plane was having mechanical problems so that I could make an emergency landing at a place called Odo Island.”
Koichi walked over to the wooden box that had become a makeshift altar in the corner of their home, took the bundle of photographs wrapped in oilpaper, and brought them back to show Noriko.
“These pictures belonged to the mechanics who were stationed there,” he said. “Every single one of them are dead now.”
“What happened?” asked Noriko.
“That same night I landed there, this…this horrible, dinosaur-like monster attacked the base. The officer in charge ordered me to shoot it with the machine guns on my Zero fighter. But I didn’t… I got cold feet and failed to carry out my duty yet again. And as a result, all of those men were killed by the beast. Men who would have survived the war and been reunited with their families by now if it weren’t for me.”
Noriko had wondered for quite some time now what these photographs were but had never found the nerve to ask. But now that she finally knew the truth, she could only bite her lip and swallow her breath.
“And now that monster has reappeared…” Koichi went on. “We just encountered it at sea. Godzilla, they call it.”
“Godzilla?” Noriko repeated. “That’s what wrecked your ship?”
“Yes… And once again, I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.”
Now that the dam had burst, these feelings which Koichi had bottled up for so long were all flowing out at once in a single, muddy stream of emotions.
“So you see. I don’t deserve to still be alive right now,” he said. “I should have died back there along with the rest of them.”
“Don’t say that!” said Noriko. “We both survived for a reason—I know it. And the best thing we can do to honor the memory of the dead is to go on living.”
“Please, as if you have any right to speak for them…”
“But I do, though! I lost both my parents in the air raids too, remember? And even as the flames took them, they told me to run—to save myself. So yes, I’ve decided I’m going to do whatever it takes to survive, no matter how hard things might get. Because I know that’s exactly what they would have wanted.”
To think of the hell she’d gone through, even as a civilian, left Koichi at a loss for words. This was the first time she’d revealed to him the reason she’d been so determined to live on and persevere in the aftermath of the war, never losing sight of herself no matter how exhausted and impoverished she became. It was a sobering reminder, and for the briefest of moments, Koichi almost felt a ray of hope from her encouragement. But the feeling didn’t last for long. Because there was a big difference between the sort of living Noriko described and simply clinging to life, as Koichi had been doing. He covered his face with both hands, closing himself up inside his own shell once more.
“I can’t do it,” he said. “Every night, I see them in my dreams…telling me to hurry up and join them already…asking how I have the audacity to still be drawing breath…”
“Those are only dreams, though,” said Noriko. “They’re not real people. They’re just specters you invented in your own head.”
Koichi vehemently shook his head. “They’re not, though. I’ve been carrying their memories with me ever since that fateful day. They’re always right here watching over me—I can feel them. And at night, when I’m asleep, they come into my dreams and blame it all on me, again and again.”
Just like before, Koichi could feel the line between dream and reality begin to blur.
“Or am I even alive right now, for that matter?” he asked, the veins in his eyes bulging red as he glared at her and devolved into raving madness. “What if I died a long time ago back there on the island? What if I’m just a slowly decaying corpse, and you and Akiko are just figments dreamt up by my rotting, worm-infested brain?”
Noriko mustered her nerve and grabbed Koichi by the head, clasping him tightly to her breast. The sound of her steady heartbeat snapped him back to his senses. “We’re alive, you see?” she said. “All of us, including you! Can’t you feel it?”
As Koichi crumpled to his knees, he wrapped his arms around Noriko’s back and started weeping like a baby.
“Here, Akiko, have a taste, dear. It’s daikon—your favorite. Yes, that’s it. Be sure to get some broth too now.”
When Koichi next awoke, he could hear Noriko over in the kitchen, offering Akiko a taste of some fresh miso soup she’d just cooked.
“Is it yummy?” asked Noriko. “That’s a good girl. You like daikon, don’t you, sweetie?”
After watching this scene play out before him a moment, Koichi turned in his bed to face the bundle of photographs on the memorial beside him.
“Can we…finally put this to rest already?” he whispered as if asking the dead men for their permission. “Because I think I’m ready to give living another shot.”
It was at that moment that Koichi Shikishima at last regained his will to live.
The coastal defense ship Ikuno was on a regular patrol cruise through the Uraga Channel. After the yet-unexplained sinkings of Takao and Kaishin Maru and the troubling reports from Shinsei Maru, she had been dispatched to the area as a precautionary measure by the government. Despite not fully believing the outlandish purported cause of said disasters, the government thought it prudent to be prepared for the worst.
The crew of Ikuno would soon learn that the testimony given by Shinsei Maru’s crew had been no exaggeration—as when they first caught sight of the beast beneath the water, it appeared to eclipse the entire length of their boat with its sheer size.
“Dear Lord…” said one of the men. “Is that it…?”
“Quick!” said another. “Call in a report to HQ!”
The gargantuan beast appeared to be making a beeline for the skyline of the newly reconstructed capitol—but a string of mines strung all across Tokyo Bay by a Sokuten-class minelayer was currently in the process of cordoning off all access to the city by sea. This “mine blockade” would serve as a final line of defense that could ensnare and destroy the beast in the event that this so-called “giant monster” actually showed up.
Unfortunately, these plans were interrupted prior to completion when the captain of said vessel emerged from the radio room, his face pale, to make an announcement.
“We just got a report from Ikuno!” he shouted. “The monster’s headed straight for Tokyo Bay as we speak!”
“Wait, so it actually exists?” said one of the men on board.
“Only a matter of time before it gets here, then,” said another.
Yet another man, who’d been monitoring the mine laying process with a pair of binoculars, suddenly gasped.
“What is it?” said the captain.
“No way,” said the man. “I don’t believe it…”
The captain pulled out his own pair of binoculars and had a look. Through the lenses he could see a long line of buoys their mines were hanging from—alongside a giant, jagged set of dorsal fins so large, they almost defied comprehension.
“Is that thing really alive?” said the man.
It was a fair question, given that whatever it was looked more like a moving island than a living organism. But the captain couldn’t even formulate an answer. Instead, he gripped his transmitter and made a frantic call to HQ.