It feels so gross.
…It feels good?
In the distance, beyond rows of narrow footpaths separating several rice paddies, Yoshiki could see small, thatch-roofed cottages. The air carried the clean scent of freshly tilled mud, typical of the season when rice paddies are flooded. The misty outline of the mountain ridges, characteristic of humid days, seemed familiar to Yoshiki.
A young man wearing a scarf around his head stood in an area overlooking a small village nestled between the mountains. His eyes were just like Hikaru’s. He was holding something wrapped in cloth close to his chest as if it were dear to him. Sweat trickled down the bridge of his nose as he adjusted the bundle several times. The rustling of the cloth sounded like someone sniffling as they wept. From between the folds of cloth, swaths of human hair spilled out like wilted flowers.
It was at that moment that Yoshiki finally took a breath.
The familiar ceiling of his classroom came back into view.
The corners of his vision were blurry with the tears spilling from his eyes, and the flickering he saw was because he was out of breath.
As soon as he sat up, he felt sick to his stomach. He clutched his chest, coughing and gagging.
“H-Hikaru…”
Beside him, Hikaru was covering his face with both hands.
“No.” Hikaru repeated this despondently while shaking his head from side to side. “No, I can’t do it… Anyone but him…”
His shoulders trembled, and in a single, short breath, he said, “Sorry.”
Hikaru picked up the backpack he had thrown to the floor, and without another word, he ran away from Yoshiki. On his way out, his leg caught on a desk right next to the door, causing a loud clatter.
“Don’t hate me.”
He said it so quietly that the rain almost drowned it out. Then he left.
✦ ✦ ✦
Rie Kurebayashi parked her van in Nozomi Supermarket’s parking lot after spotting a long and narrow shadow hanging from a train crossing signal.
When she opened the driver’s side door, she was struck by how damp and muggy it was outside, a stark contrast to the air-conditioned interior of her van. The rain that had fallen an hour or so earlier made the humidity that much worse.
The sky was gradually changing from orange to dark blue, yet the temperature showed no signs of dropping.
“Goodness, this is unbearable!”
She pulled a hand towel from her bag and wiped her forehead with it, then walked back to the crossing she had passed by moments earlier.
The shadow hanging from the signal had grown. It left no reflection in the puddle that had formed at the edge of the crosswalk.
Long, black hair swayed in the wind, and a face-like shape started to peek out from the signal. Left unattended, it would surely fall out onto the crossing and cause a serious accident or two.
Kurebayashi pretended to wait for the light to change at the crosswalk as she glared at the shadow. There was a stench, too. It smelled like food scraps that had been left in the kitchen sink for too long.
Kurebayashi pressed her left arm with her right hand, gripping it tightly. It didn’t really mean much, but doing this helped her better control the flow of energy within her so she could “close” the place that was spitting that thing out.
“Sorry ’bout this,” she said quietly.
There was a snapping sound, and the shadow vanished. The portal between this side and the other had been forcefully shut, pushing back the thing that had begun to poke its head out from that boundary.
The long, black hair that had swayed eerily like the branches of a willow tree had also vanished, as if blown away by the wind.
Kurebayashi called these things “impurities.”
“I really don’t wanna be doin’ this, but there’s jus’ too many of ’em…”
She knew that they didn’t all cause people harm. She understood that, in small numbers, they didn’t significantly affect the lives and activities of humankind. But lately, there had simply been too many.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Kurebayashi wiped her neck with her towel.
There wasn’t much that she could do. All she could manage was to push back the impurities that appeared up on this side and seal the “holes” behind them. She could never actually destroy the impurities, and if the holes they passed through ended up growing larger than expected, they would be beyond her abilities.
Still, whenever she closed one of these holes, she recalled her past.
Her son, the eldest of her two children, was still in elementary school at the time. She could still vividly recall the sensation in her hands of lifting his limp body after he collapsed in her house. Her son had been hurt because of his own weak mother, and as a result, they hadn’t seen each other for a long time.
As she headed back to Nozomi, she thought of a high schooler named Yoshiki Tsujinaka.
He was a boy who had been burdened with something far too dangerous—a boy who had gotten involved with something not of this world, become influenced by it, and ended up closer to impurities as a result.
Kurebayashi called people like him majirimono—mixed beings that touched the boundary between this world and the other side.
She wondered what had become of that boy after they met.
Could he ever overcome the death of the friend he held dear, knowing full well that this person was now some incomprehensible, nonhuman entity? Even though this person was so close that he might just “mix” with them?
Would he be able to understand and come to terms with that situation, grieve and process his regrets, mourn, and then pray before setting out on his own path?
“I assumed it was a girlfriend or somethin’.”
After muttering that to herself as she returned to her car, Kurebayashi wondered just what kind of person this “friend” of Yoshiki Tsujinaka was—or rather, what kind of person they had been.
Then, as she was about to start her engine, she remembered that she was out of soy sauce and eggs. She rushed back out of her van and, as she headed toward the store, muttered, “Ahhh, it’s so dang hot!”