Trapped

Yuanyin's death had trapped me, and I had trapped Toji in turn. And both Toji and I had once been trapped by Yuanyin in this little corner of Kanagawa.

So was being trapped a good thing or a bad thing?

(1)

Just before leaving, I suddenly decided to wash my hands. When I turned and stepped back, I nearly collided with Toji.

He clearly hadn't expected my first move on leaving to be turning around. Unable to hide in time, he simply let himself stand there in plain sight.

"Are you going to follow me out?" I asked.

"Yeah." He admitted it readily.

Lately-no, starting from a certain day-Toji's gaze had settled entirely on me.

There was no particular meaning in that gaze, nor any emotion. Like a surveillance camera, he merely recorded, or kept watch over, my every move.

When I took an apple into the kitchen, he would make a point of handing me a knife, then promptly take it back once I was finished. When I went into the bathroom alone, he would sit in the living room counting the seconds, then come knock on my door after a certain amount of time.

Even when I went out, as I was doing now, he would quietly follow at a careful distance, keeping me within sight while making sure I didn't notice him.

Viewed that way, it looked as though he had trapped me. In reality, though, I was the one who had trapped him.

Toji Zenin was actually someone who loved freedom.

His idea of freedom wasn't suddenly running off to some foreign country, spreading his arms before mountains, rivers, and starry seas, and shouting that he loved the world. It was being able to do whatever he pleased.

Doing whatever you pleased could be equated with freedom.

When I was one, our family hadn't moved to Kanagawa yet. We lived in Tokyo, the most prosperous and most ruthless place in Japan.

Its prosperity lay in the fact that you could buy any entertainment you wanted. Its ruthlessness lay in the fact that every kind of entertainment demanded a steep price. That price usually meant money.

Toji liked betting on horses. And Tokyo had only one racecourse.

I had seen him swagger inside with the allowance Yuanyin had just given him, then come out an hour later without a penny to his name.

Most people with such terrible luck would have given up gambling long ago. Not him. The more he lost, the harder he tried; the more he lost, the wilder he became.

Every month, on the very first day Yuanyin gave him his allowance, he managed to claim the throne of those who spent their entire monthly income.

He scattered money like water, so free it was unbelievable. That habit also suggested that, long before marrying Yuanyin, he had already grown used to this way of life-used to leaving himself no fallback for tomorrow.

Later, Yuanyin could no longer stand a job without fighting, nor could she stand bowing and scraping inside that box of an office. She quit outright without another job lined up and brought us to Kanagawa.

Half the flame of Toji's freedom was snuffed out that day.

The potholed road beneath my feet looked like the surface of the moon when it hadn't rained. After rain, it became a pond where Yuanyin and Toji played.

I walked slowly down that road. Only when I looked back did I realize Toji was still standing at the other end, without having taken a single step.

With the racecourse taken away, Yuanyin had found other ways to make up for his lost freedom.

Even walking down the street, they could splash through the water however they pleased, until their trouser cuffs and hems were soaked and droplets fell one by one from their hair.

Before Yuanyin passed away, Toji had found a freedom that belonged to Kanagawa.

Without a racecourse, they squatted by the roadside playing marbles, jumped into puddles together on rainy days, and came out for snowball fights when the snow reached their knees.

In my previous life, at a lecture, a highly respected professor had once told me that a love of gambling was really a craving for something. That something was luck.

Because life was so unlucky, people sought those tiny moments of happiness through a method that showed them plainly whether they were lucky or not.

Yearning, seeking, addiction, then madness.

I thought Toji had stopped short of addiction back then because Yuanyin had trapped him.

But what about now? Had the piece gouged out of him caused the surrounding flesh to die? Had the damage continued to spread until it finally became madness?

Suddenly, I felt that being trapped might be a good thing after all.

(2)

Flyers fluttered everywhere. I picked one up from the ground and studied it. Printed across the blue flyer was a huge name-"Moscow."

Not Moscow the place, but a film called "Moscow."

I was about to toss it into a trash can when the back of the flyer made me rescue it.

There were three photographs, two men and one woman. I didn't recognize their names, but their clothes and appearances instantly reminded me of that night-the night I had reconciled with "Ayako."

So the story of Ayako, Ryosuke, and Yamato came from this film.

Moscow. "Moscow."

Three Japanese people met in snowbound Moscow. Living in a foreign land, they naturally felt an affinity for their fellow countrymen. And so, the first person to fall in love with Yamato was Ryosuke. Ryosuke loved him quietly, weaving his love into every little moment they spent together. For Yamato to notice, he would have had to love him too. Unfortunately, Yamato didn't love him. Yamato loved Ayako. A classic love triangle. Once one corner died, the other two swiftly fell apart.

The flyer wasn't merely advertising the film. Its main purpose was to advertise a fan gathering.

A fan gathering in a rural county town for a third-rate film that could only get a dawn broadcast slot. Honestly, I was curious.

I wondered what the director had in mind when he arranged this gathering. So I gave Toji a flyer, told him my plans for the following evening, and patiently asked whether he wanted to come with me, even though I knew he would follow whether I asked or not.

But I would always respect him.

(3)

The fan gathering was actually scheduled for midnight, and instead of the bustling West District, the venue was a café on a mountain in the East District.

A third of Kanagawa's East District consisted of forest and mountains.

There was only one forest, but several mountains. On one of them lay the cemetery where Yuanyin was buried.

Toji and I left at eleven that night, then took a taxi to the foot of the mountain. Like the cemetery where I had taken a tumble, this mountain was visible only as a black silhouette.

Remembering that day, I instinctively felt my pocket. Once I confirmed that I had brought a flashlight, much of my uncertainty about walking in the dark instantly faded.

The night was deep as we headed up the mountain.

Before we even stepped onto the steep stairs, Toji took my hand with one hand and my flashlight with the other. It seemed the last incident had left him even more shaken than me.

The first time father and daughter held hands came so ordinarily, on a moonless night. Given his personality, I had thought he would wait at least until Megumi came of age, at his high school graduation, before taking his child's hand with a show of formality while secretly brimming with tenderness.

I was a little overwhelmed by the unexpected affection and instinctively tried to pull away. I was afraid I couldn't bear it.

Toji tightened his grip. He was so strong that it even hurt. I should have struggled to get away from him, just as Yuanyin had left me. Yet now, I wanted to hold that hand in return and let him lead me, step by step, somewhere farther away.

As the trees thinned and the view opened up, moonlight suddenly filled the world.

It turned out there was a full moon tonight. The dense woods had simply blocked it from my sight.

The café wasn't large, but it had more than enough room for the people around me. Aside from Toji and me, a dozen or so people had already arrived, including, to my surprise, some elderly people.

The path was so steep, without even a glimmer of light. How had those two elderly people found the courage to climb the mountain? At their age, they didn't even need to fall-a little excessive breathlessness could kill them.

For art? For the film? Or...

I didn't dwell on it, because the so-called fan reception had already begun.

I sat beside Toji on a bench. On the stage nearby stood a director in a baseball cap and khaki vest, dressed exactly like the stereotype.

Instead of introducing himself, he tirelessly introduced the film, from its plot to its behind-the-scenes stories.

Beside me, Toji yawned and slumped against the back of the bench like a gooey puddle of melted ice cream.

It was kind of him to sit through this with me. He hardly seemed like someone who could sit through an entire art film.

After the director had talked for quite a while, a young couple on a nearby bench began voicing their displeasure. The first to speak was a young man who seemed to have incorporated practically every metallic element into his face. As he complained, he tossed his head about, making the metal ornaments dangling from his face and ears jingle.

His girlfriend frowned unhappily beside him. I was certain the clatter of metal was bothering her, because the "ghost" clinging to her back kept muttering, "So noisy, so noisy."

Under their complaints, the director lowered the brim of his cap, leaving only his embarrassed mouth visible. Clumps of black flesh were gathering in his shadow.

Seeing the director back down, the young man kept shouting the name of the actress who played Ayako, repeating that he had come just for her and demanding to know why she hadn't appeared yet.

The director lowered his cap still further and said quietly, "None of the actors are attending. This is only a fan gathering for the film."

That was enough to send everyone who had come for the excitement, hoping to see the actors, scattering.

After a stretch of noisy commotion, the only people left in the café were the elderly couple, a boy in a hat, and Toji and me.

"Are we leaving?" Toji asked me.

I shook my head. "Let's wait a little longer."

Until my curiosity was satisfied.

What followed was the director's one-man show. He didn't seem to care whether anyone had come. He simply wanted to talk-about the film, about Moscow.

When the moon no longer hung in the sky, the gathering ended too.

Toji was fast asleep beside me. In no hurry to wake him, I followed the director, the elderly couple, and the boy out of the café.

The café stood on a platform halfway up the mountain. Outside it was only a small clearing enclosed by a flimsy railing.

The director stood at the edge of the railing and, in the first light of dawn, spread his arms to embrace the hideous "ghost" that had assembled itself from his shadow.

Through his tears, he said, "Tai, can you understand me? I made 'Moscow.' I made our story into a proper film."

The "ghost," which had completely lost any human shape, didn't respond at all. Instead, it tried to devour him with those clumps of flesh.

The boy in the hat cried out in terror, "Cousin! Snap out of it! That's a monster!"

The elderly couple watching it all seemed unable to see the "ghost." They only wiped away their tears sadly and said, "Ayato, if this will make you happy, then go."

It seemed the elderly couple had climbed the mountain to attend a funeral, while the boy in the hat had come to make one last attempt to save his family.

My question had been answered, and I had no reason to keep watching. I turned to leave, but someone suddenly called out behind me, "Little girl, have you seen this film?"

I looked back. The person asking was the director, who was about to be devoured.

"I've seen half of it," I answered honestly.

"Then have you seen the ending?"

I nodded.

The flesh had already climbed up his neck. With difficulty, he said, "Then... what did you think of Ryosuke's ending?"

I looked steadily at him and understood. This time, the person speaking to me was the real "Ryosuke."

"I like Ryosuke." I turned and approached the director, step by step. "I understand Ryosuke's ending." I stopped before him, before the "ghost." "But I don't like Ryosuke's ending."

My palm, charged with void energy, touched the "ghost." The instant it made contact, the sticky clumps of flesh were devoured by the void instead.

"Ryosuke, stop clinging to your memories. Memories can't return your love, and this monster certainly can't." I said those words to Ryosuke, and to myself.

Ryosuke, trapped in Moscow; the director Ayato, trapped in "Moscow"; and I, trapped in Yuanyin's death-all of us had to admit, at that moment, that being trapped was the most terrible, the worst thing in the world.