“That father of yours ain’t no good.”
“Everyone’s worried.”
“Yer sister’s a real beaut. Think she’ll like my oldest?”
“Why doesn’t yer sister go to school? Ya best not spoil that girl, y’hear?”
“You can tell yer auntie anythin’.”
“Ain’t no trouble at all. Go on an’ take it, now.”
“That lady is awful scary. Them city girls’re so stuck-up.”
“My, yer so big! How tall are ya now?”
“My son helps out around the house more.”
“Y’ain’t interested in nobody?”
“You oughtta hurry ’n’ get hitched for yer mother’s sake.”
“Y’aint doin’ no club activities?”
“Lemme cut them bangs for ya!”
“Ya sound just like yer father. Yer becomin’ more and more like him every year.”
“He’s always got a gloomy look on his face.”
When he covered his ears, a sharp, stabbing pain ran through his temples.
A brain that was right in front of his eyes and ears asked, “What’re they doin’ keepin’ their lights on till the middle of the night?” Each damp fold radiated a nauseating warmth that grazed Yoshiki’s nose. He could no longer breathe.
“Yer gonna go to the city, leavin’ no one to take over the loggin’ business, ain’t ya? Y’oughtta think about the parents yer leavin’ behind.”
Just as the weight of the overlapping brains threatened to crush him, a voice called out to him from afar.
It was Hikaru’s voice.
Yoshiki could finally breathe again, and when he looked up, Hikaru was there.
It really was Hikaru.
It was him when he was in elementary school, wearing a pitch-black satchel—the clunky Dutch-inspired ones that Japanese grade-schoolers used—and glaring at Yoshiki while holding a small cardboard box.
“Don’t run away, ya dummy,” Hikaru told him.
Inside the box was a fledgling crow. It wasn’t breathing.
“That’s…,” said Yoshiki.
Crowly—Yoshiki remembered that was the bird’s name. Hikaru had named it, and the two of them took care of it together back when they were in elementary school. They had found it all alone without its parents near Hikaru’s grandfather’s shiitake farm.
But it died before making it to adulthood.
“Crowly’s dead, and it’s all yer fault, Yoshiki.”
“…Yer wrong.”
“Am not! It was yer turn to feed ’im today.”
Yeah. That’s right.
Hikaru had blamed Yoshiki then, too.
What was it that I said back to him again?
“He’s a livin’ creature… This sorta thing happens.”
“What?! It doesn’t just happen! Stop makin’ excuses!”
That’s right. That wasn’t enough for Hikaru. That’s the kind of kid he was.
Yoshiki knew that. He also knew that the Hikaru standing before him was Hikaru as an elementary school student, and a sharp pain shot through his forehead, striking him persistently, over and over again.
“And you forgot to feed him that one time, too, didn’t you?” Yoshiki said.
“But today was yer turn to feed ’im!”
The sharp pain continued, and Yoshiki wondered just who was repeatedly slashing away at him.
“Look, I’m sorry for forgettin’ to feed ’im. But it was just one time,” he told Hikaru.
“Well, he died durin’ that time.”
That’s right. He did.
“Ya forgot twice, and I fed him both those times,” Yoshiki countered.
Hikaru’s eyes widened slightly, and he didn’t know what to say. But barely a moment later, he snapped back, childishly and violently swinging his anger around with reckless abandon.
“Just admit it! Ya killed him, ya dummy!”
Hikaru was berating Yoshiki, saying that it was all his fault and that he was to blame.
He couldn’t handle his own grief over Crowly’s death and the fury he felt knowing there was no way to undo what happened, so the most he could do was throw all of it at someone else.
Hikaru’s eyes, which were far more childish than high-school aged Hikaru’s, were filled with sorrow.
I knew that, and yet…
“Huh? No way! Never!” Yoshiki shouted.
Despite understanding what Hikaru was going through, for some reason, Yoshiki’s emotions became more juvenile. Both his temper and his tolerance for nonsense took a frightening nosedive, and they rampaged in his throat.
“It ain’t my fault…!” he yelled at Hikaru.
“Huh? Ya make me sick!”
“Yer the one who makes me sick! And it’s been me takin’ care of Crowly all this time! Why do I have to take the blame?!”
“So how’d he die, then? He was doin’ fine up till now.”
“Beats me. Yer the one who makes him eat weird junk all the time. So don’t ya reckon yer the one who killed ’im?!”
The truth was that Crowly wasn’t long for this world from the moment he was separated from his parents. That much was clear, and Yoshiki understood it perfectly well in retrospect, but he couldn’t stop himself at that moment.
“Yer always such a whiny wimp!” Hikaru shouted.
Hikaru’s wiry hands grabbed Yoshiki by the collar, causing Yoshiki to lose his temper. Blood rushed to his head.
Yoshiki grabbed Hikaru’s soft hair with his equally wiry hand. The satchel on his back, which was identical to Hikaru’s, swung heavily as Yoshiki used his full weight to lunge at his friend.
Then, deep inside Yoshiki’s ears, he heard a muffled splash and the sound of bursting bubbles.