The heat was enough to make him want to scream. The energy was like nothing he’d ever felt before, and the pleasure felt like purifying water welling up beneath his skin. It was like waking up in the morning and being liberated from the pent-up desire that kept you up all night. It was the same sense of ecstasy mixed with shame you got from touching yourself for the first time. It just felt good, pleasure so intense that even though you felt unspeakable guilt for experiencing it, was too amazing to quit. Once you knew a world of pleasure like that existed, there was no going back.
The magnetic pull of the Kappa Zombie’s shirikodama was so strong that it had no trouble at all dragging out the desire lurking deep within Kazuki’s own heart.
“Leaking,” they heard Keppi’s voice echo.
His consciousness jumped, rewinding back to that morning’s events as he had experienced them. It felt like seeing the past recaptured on screen. But there was something none of them understood at the time. Beneath the surface of every event—no, beneath the surface of the whole world—existed a whole other story.
The morning’s events, as Kazuki experienced them, began when he was heading to school. After checking Azuma Sara’s lucky selfie horoscope, he headed to a children’s park with his box in tow. His objective was what stood in the center of the lot—a multipurpose toilet. He entered the handicapped stall and, without missing a beat, began his usual daily routine.
“This is me from this morning?” Kazuki suddenly realized, awakening from his daze. The borders of his body were still fuzzy, and yet he could feel cold sweat pouring from his skin like a waterfall. “Stop it, don’t loooook!!”
Unfortunately, without a mouth to speak, Kazuki’s cries of protest went unheard, and the reel rolled mercilessly forward.
In the private space of that bathroom, Kazuki abruptly began stripping off his uniform. Then he began to dress himself in an outfit he unpacked from his box. Once the clothes were done, he donned a distinctive pair of red shoes. After that, he pulled on a wig of lustrous, long black hair. Once he smoothed it out with a brush, he puckered his lips and began to apply a thin coat of pink lip balm. His reflection in the mirror looked exactly like Azuma Sara, the idol.
The shirikodama, wrapped up in Kazuki’s desire, bled into Toi’s consciousness. Sara-Kazuki, on the prowl for that day’s lucky selfie item (boxes), wandered inside the garage just in time to witness Toi’s vandalism. What followed was exactly the same as Toi remembered from that morning, with one new piece of information: Sara-Kazuki’s objective had been the stacks of boxes in the parking lot, not Toi or the crime he’d been committing.
“So you were that girl from the garage!” Toi shouted, although his exclamation also produced no sound.
The scene changed once again, the truth about what happened surging through Enta’s consciousness like a wave.
Sara-Kazuki managed to lose Toi. He quickly slipped out of his costume and back into his school uniform. He kept an innocent look on his face, box in hand, as he left the multipurpose toilet behind. When he stopped by the Kappa Plaza, he immediately uploaded the selfie he’d taken with his box to the chat window in his phone app, along with a message to that person: “Today’s lucky selfie mission is complete, dish! ✩”
They responded moments later. “Thanks! I’m so happy every day, thanks to you, Sara-chan, dish! ✩”
“I can’t believe it! So Kazuki has been dressing up as Azuma Sara and pretending to be her on a social networking app…?” Enta was similarly unable to give voice to his astonishment, but with their minds merged together, the other two could feel his shock loud and clear.
Equally loud was Kazuki’s cry from the heart. “The secret that I couldn’t share with anyone… Now everyone knoooooows!!”
The Kappa Zombie’s shirikodama now safely transferred. Keppi gulped it down. “Desire consumed.”
Scene 4
“WE’RE BACK in our original forms, back to being human! And my box is back too!” Enta’s joyful cheer echoed through the Kappa Plaza.
Toi stood there with a disturbed look on his face. His precious box had been returned, now snug in his arms, and the matter was settled. But it was difficult to pass off that profoundly strange experience as nothing more than a dream. The sensations felt all too real. “What was that thing we saw when we were transmitting the shirikodama?”
Keppi sat upon his pedestal, looking sated and satisfied as he answered. “Buuurp… Sarazanmai connects your bodies and minds, ribbit. It also means that you share all the secrets you don’t want anyone to find out, ribbit.”
“So that was Kazuki’s secret?” Enta asked, his gaze aimed at the entrance of the plaza, where Kazuki sat huddled with his arms wrapped around his legs. His box toppled over beside him, the feminine costume inside it now spilling out onto the ground.
“…That’s right,” said Kazuki. “I’m a freak that dresses up as Azuma Sara and takes selfies of myself!”
Enta couldn’t keep quiet when he heard such shame in Kazuki’s tone. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, sure, I was surprised, but that’s not going to change our relationship at all.”
Toi, in contrast, huffed as if he were exasperated. “Are you serious right now? That dude was wearing girls’ clothing and posing as an idol!”
“The two of us have a bond that can’t be broken so easily!” Enta retorted. “Besides, Kuji, breaking into people’s cars is a crime!”
“I don’t need to be lectured by you.”
“What did you say?!” Enta, always hot-tempered, grabbed Toi by his collar.
“Enough, enough, enough!” Kazuki’s loud voice stopped them both in their tracks. He started snatching up the pieces of his costume that littered the ground, chucking them back into his box. “I don’t need your opinions! I’m not even remotely interested in having you try to understand! This connection is mine alone, my connection with them! I’ll tell as many lies as I need to keep it that way!”
Silence fell in the plaza, one that was interrupted moments later by Keppi. “Now, now, let’s all take some time to cool down, ribbit. As thanks for your help today, I’ll give you a gift, ribbit.” Divine light began to spill from the shell on his back, until the entire plaza was bathed in blinding rays. The shell popped open in a dramatic billow of smoke, revealing a golden plate. “This is a Wishing Plate, capable of granting anything you desire, ribbit. Now listen closely, because what I’m about to say is important, ribbit. This is an incredibly valuable plate that can only be produced by me, the crown prince of the Kappa Kingdom.”
“Seriously?!” Enta swiped the plate from him. “Can you get a year’s worth of kappamaki with this plate then? Kazuki loves those cucumber sushi rolls!”
The plate, which Enta was brusquely turning over in his hands, flashed with light and the words “A Year’s Worth of Kappamaki” appeared on its surface. In the next instant, an enormous cucumber roll came smashing down to the ground.
“Gwah?!”
Keppi hopped up onto the enormous kappamaki and declared, “Your wish has been granted, ribbit.”
Ka-klink!
The golden plate cracked and splintered, disappearing without a trace.
“Wait, hold on a second! That didn’t count!” Enta hung his head as he tried desperately to gather the fragments in his hands, but it was already too late.
Toi stared, gobsmacked, at the unbelievable scene that unfolded before him. “So what he said was actually true?”
“I would like you all to continue transforming into kappa to pluck out the Kappa Zombies’ shirikodama, ribbit. And if you have a wish you would like to have granted, then…”
Kazuki, who watched in silence, only reacted after hearing that last bit.
The world overflows with connections. Blood connections, geographical connections, emotional connections. Everyone is connected in this world.
But those connections disappear easily. I know that better than anyone else.
This time for sure, I have to protect our connection. No matter what it takes.
The Azuma Bridge was so quiet at night. It was hard to believe that until moments ago, it had been crowded with zombies. The light from the bridge’s pillars rippled beautifully on the surface of the river below.
Kazuki stood at the river’s edge with his box at his feet, the contents of it no longer a secret known only to him. Cradled snugly in his hand was a phone with a Sara mascot keychain attached.
The message on his screen read “Goodnight, Sara-chan.”
All he wanted to do was reply with a simple goodnight in return, but his fingers felt impossibly heavy as they tapped across the keyboard. After much struggle, Kazuki finally sent off a short “Goodnight, dish! ✩”
Then he lifted his box and started toward home.
Scene 5
WHILE KAZUKI AND THE OTHERS slept off their exhausting day, a man pled his innocence to two police officers at the Asakusa Otter police box in the southern part of Kappabashi Kitchenware Town.
“It wasn’t me-ow that did it! You’ve got the wrong purr-son!” He sat at a work desk, facing a number of sorrowful-looking stray cats. A phone, presumably his, lay screen-up on the desk.
One of the police officers, a pale individual with glasses, fixed the man with a sharp glare. The door to the police box snapped shut on its own. The ground below the suspect shifted to show the glowing image of a bright red heart.
“For those souls without beginnings or ends, those unable to connect…” the man with glasses said in a low voice, giving the signal.
“Now, let us open a door…” The other officer, a flamboyant man with blond hair and brown skin, abruptly pointed the barrel of his gun at the suspect.
“Eek?!”
“Is it desire?”
“Or love?”
A mechanical humming came drifting in from somewhere, followed by the beat of a taiko drum that gradually grew louder. It was clear that something terrible was about to happen, yet the man couldn’t move.
Without a moment of hesitation, the blond officer pulled the trigger.
“Desire Extraction!”
In the moment after the two policemen exclaimed that phrase, the man’s body was nowhere to be found. All that remained was the cellphone on the table. Its pitch-black screen now showed a single, bright red symbol of a heart, with static running across it.