Joe Borrelli
The Torment Game
Genre: Horror
Word Count: 85,020
The Torment Game
A Tale Of Horror
By Joseph Borrelli
The Burning Paper Crane
falling sick on a journey
my dream goes wandering
over a field of dried grass
-Matsu Basho (1694)
Four out of five of the experts agree
She’s a danger to herself and society
She’s lost all touch with reality
She’s lost control
-The Arkhams “She’s Lost Control”
Tokyo
Then
Hayami’s heart stopped just as the van turned onto 4-3, Yaesu 1-Chome Street, despite brave Kamiko’s attempts to massage life back into it.
The three other teenage girls inside the car were screaming.
"I can see her! I can see her!" Tomomi wailed, her tiny fingers interlaced over her eyes.
"I don’t...." Kamiko’s breath hitched. "I don’t think she’s breathing. Yumi! I don’t think she’s breathing!"
Yumi’s stomach sank. Tears of terror and frustration streamed down her cheeks. She glanced back at the floor of the van. They were riding in Yumi’s father’s contractor van. The seats in the back had been removed, and Hayami lay on the empty bed, her body banging against bags of cement and Yumi’s father’s tools with every lurch of the van. Kamiko was next to her.
Both girls were covered in blood. Kamiko pressed her hands down on Hayami’s chest over and over again. Hayami’s ruined rose petal lips were half-open, accepting each resuscitating breath like a kiss. Her shredded left eye would never close again.
"Keep trying, Kamiko. Keep her alive. We’re almost at the hospital."
In the front passenger seat, Tomomi’s voice degenerated into a ceaseless scream. She kept staring out the side window, curling into her seat, her hands balled into fists at her temples.
“Tomomi, stop,” Yumi said.
Tomomi gripped Yumi’s arm, her grip surprisingly strong for such a tiny frame. She tried to say something but it came out as a ripped-throat scream.
“Shut her up!” Kamiko shrieked. The car hit a bump in the road. Hayami’s body rose and fell like one of the sacks of concrete in the back of the van.
“Make her stop!” Tomomi wailed. She was looking past Yumi at some fixed point in the darkness, at some phantom only her twisted mind could see.
Yumi slapped her.
Whatever filled Tomomi with such mindless terror was instantly forgotten. She stared at Yumi, a deep bruised red budding on her cheek.
Yumi’s hand trembled. She struggled to keep her voice level. "We . . . we can’t do anything if we panic."
"I..." Tomomi started. She looked out the side window again and sighed in defeat. “Sorry.”
Yumi tightened her grip on the steering wheel. The streets of Kabukichō, slicked by the rainstorm, reflected the million neon signs. It was like driving on a shimmering, slippery rainbow. "Good. Okay. We just need to get Hayami to the hospital and get her help."
"I don’t think we can," Kamiko said, collapsing away from the body. "I think she’s really dead."
The hollowness of Kamiko’s voice hit Yumi harder than the words did.
Yumi pulled over to the side of the road. She kept breathing harder and harder but she couldn’t compel her lungs to pull in air. The rain pounded relentlessly against the car and streaked down the windshield in rivulets, distorting the world outside. The lightning was indistinguishable from the flashing advertisements on the street.
"What are you doing? Why did you stop?" Kamiko said, the panic in her voice mixing with her familiar, tiresome defiance. "We’re almost there. The hospital is just a couple blocks away, right? Let’s go!"
Yumi looked back toward Hayami’s body. Her head lolled and pointed her shredded left eye up at Yumi. You did this to me. You made us play the torment game.
"Yumi!" Kamiko shouted.
"We’re almost there. Come on! If she dies, we’re all going to be in serious trouble."
"We already are," Tomomi said. She kept staring out the side window.
"Shut up." Kamiko touched Yumi’s shoulder. "Let me drive."
Yumi looked back at Hayami’s body, laid across the floor like a shredded prop dummy in a Noboru Iguchi movie. "Okay."
Yumi’s father’s work van was enormous, especially with all the rear seats removed, but the two girls were off-balance, a tangle of knees and hipbones, bruising each other as they switched positions. Kamiko took the wheel, eased it into drive, and turned the windshield wipers on. The van shuddered forward carefully and Yumi dimly remembered that Kamiko had never driven anything in her life.
Yumi plopped down next to Hayami’s body. Hayami looked like someone had tried to run a chainsaw through her. Her spilled blood puddled like a lake in the entire rear of the van. Yumi could ignore the smell in the front, but the rear reeked of a heavy copper stink. She backed away from the body.
"Keep trying, Yumi. You have to try and bring her back!" Kamiko said.
"I...I can’t."
"I can’t do it and Tomomi is useless. Please!?"
Yumi inched forward towards her friend. The ragged outlines of Hayami’s wounds were all the more horrific in the occasional flash of light from outside the van. Yumi tried to avoid the blood surrounding her but it soaked into her legs and her bare knees.
Yumi reached out and touched Hayami’s face. The vertical tear on her lip nearly tore her face in two. No one had touched her, no blade carved into her flesh, but she was ripped apart anyway.
The torment game was never supposed to work. Not really.
She took Hayami’s beautiful, destroyed face in her hands. There was a way to do this, right? Tip the head back, keep the wound elevated, call a parent, press on the chest, create a splint. They teach you everything in school. How do you do CPR when your hands won’t stop shaking and you can barely breathe yourself?
Yumi cupped Hayami’s split lips - will air even get down into her lungs or will it just seep back up through the tear in her mouth? - and lowered her mouth down onto the girl. She took a deep breath.
The car bounced. Hayami’s arm flopped against Yumi’s side.
She screamed and scrambled back against the rear of the van. Hayami’s head lolled back, seeming to follow her as she retreated. The ruined eye glared up at her like an accusation.
We’re going to go to jail for this.
"Stop the van."
"What? Why? We’re right around the corner."
"Stop the van, idiot!"
The sheer viciousness of Yumi’s voice cut through everyone’s hysteria. Kamiko stomped on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left. Hayami’s arm bumped against Yumi’s gore-soaked knee and she startled back in revulsion.
Silence settled into the car. The others weren’t saying anything. They both stared at Yumi, their expression somewhere between pleading and terrified.
It was like being in the eye of the storm. Yumi felt the van’s powerful engine idle. She looked through the side window. The rain fell harder. Each drop bounced off the glass like a pebble. Yumi breathed, collected her thoughts, and spoke.
"If we walk in there with her...."
Tomomi’s eyes opened wide. "No. No no no no."
"If we walk in there with her, we’re murderers."
"We didn’t do anything!" Kamiko shouted.
"Do you think anyone will believe that?"
The others looked at Hayami’s body., Yumi imagined the conversations they were having in their head. No, officer, we didn’t kill her. She just ripped open in front of us.
"What if they save her?" Kamiko said, her voice barely audible over the tap-tap of the rain.
"She’s dead, Kamiko.”
“But . . .”
“She’s dead. We’re covered in her blood. And we didn’t kill her."
Tomomi shuddered like something cold settled on her spine.
Kamiko looked down at Hayami’s body. Her eyes had gone an angry red from crying. "I don’t think I can do this."
"We have to. I don’t think we have a choice."
Yumi turned to Tomomi. She had shifted away from the others as she stared blankly out the passenger side window. Kamiko sighed and lowered her head.
The van crept forward to the front door of the hospital. All sense of urgency gone, it slunk like a pervert in the storm. No other cars passed them in the streets; the storm had driven everyone inside. Hozanchi Hospital lay before them, a boxy concrete tomb at the end of the road. Bright slashes of light rose up to greet them.
The hospital parking lot of was deserted–no ambulances by the emergency entrance, no one lingering near the wide powered doors. Kamiko clicked off the van’s headlights as they approached the front gate. Yumi hadn’t thought about that and felt begrudgingly impressed.
“There.” Yumi pointed toward a bus stop a few meters down from the hospital entrance. A small glass bubble covered a tiny bench and the supporting wall had a cute advertisment of an orange cat in a police officer’s uniform situated against a yellow background, helpfully offering advice to the wayward traveller. The backlighting on the poster made the image glow like a rectangular sun.
Kamiko pulled the van next to the bus station. The vehicle idled. They might as well have been three travellers in a spaceship lost on a dead world.
“Can we . . .” Tomomi whispered.
“Let’s just do this,” Yumi said.
Rain tapped a staccato beat on the roof as the van idled outside the covered bus depot by the emergency door. Kamiko opened the driver’s side, the world outside roaring to greet her. She pushed herself out of the oversized driver chair and Yumi watched her slink around the car, head bowed against the storm. Tomomi sat balled up in the seat, her knees to her chest, still gazing out into the distance.
Yumi might have said something to Tomomi, but the rear doors of the van clunked and creaked open. Kamiko muscled the doors aside and glared at Yumi. She looked like something that crawled up from a moldy old well.
“Help me with her,” Kamiko said. The storm swallowed her words.
Yumi looked down at Hayami’s body. The ruined left eye no longer looked directly at her but instead stared off through the ceiling, the pupil running a milky pinkish-red. Her long, beautiful hair mixed in and spread with the blood in fat ropey strands.
“Yumi!” Kamiko yelled. She gestured toward the hospital doors.
Yumi slipped her hands underneath Hayami’s armpits. Kamiko grabbed her feet and pulled. They lifted with all their strength but Hayami wouldn’t move an inch. Without any kind of conscious force in her body, her tiny frame might as well have been made of concrete.
Yumi pushed harder, trying to anchor herself against the back of the seat, but she slipped on Hayami’s blood and lost her footing. She breathed out again, her face red and puffy from effort, and she might have given up again if Tomomi hadn’t gotten out of her seat and helped them pull Hayami out of the cab.
Getting Hayami’s body underneath the bus station shelter turned out to be much easier. Yumi did most of the carrying, dragging Hayami’s body from under the armpits. She’d inherited her father’s strength and tall, sturdy frame. Normally she hated how indelicate it made her feel, but strength had its uses.
Actually touching Hayami’s body chilled her far worse than the storm. She could have stood there until she drowned and would still never have felt clean again. Finally she set the body down underneath the bus station awning as delicately as circumstance allowed.
The bubbled shelter roof didn’t help cover Hayami at all. Rain seemed to fall sideways and slash at them. Kamiko knelt down and carefully closed Hayami’s good right eye.
The three of them stared down at their friend’s body. The harsh lights of the yellow bus station advertisement bathed the scene like the flash of a crime scene photographer. Hayami’s damaged left eye remained open, pointed at the glass ceiling of the bus depot’s roof. The girls would have probably stared at her forever if Tomomi hadn’t broken the silence.
"Cover her," she said in a voice of cold authority.
Yumi returned to the rear of the van on legs that wanted to give out from under her. She reached over the sea of blood settling into the grooves of the van’s interior and pulled out Hayami’s backpack and grey hoodie. Yumi lingered over the coat, turning it over and staring at it. The fabric still smelled like Hayami and held her warmth. She returned to the others, lifted up Hayami’s head, and put the bag and hoodie underneath her head like a pillow.
"Take her-" Kamiko said, or tried to— her words drowned out by the storm.
"What?"
"Take her phone," Kamiko repeated. "There are photos of us in there."
"Oh," Yumi nodded sharply, knelt down, and rummaged through the backpack.
She found Hayami’s phone in the pocket of the hoodie. She’d bought it less than two weeks ago and hung a dorky Togapi charm off a little strap from the case. Right there on the phone’s front screen was a photo of the three girls standing on the field by the cram school. They were all smiling and flashing peace signs at the camera.
Yumi’s stomach twisted in on itself. Hayami had unknowingly used a photo of her three murderers as her lock screen.
"I’m sorry, Hayami! I’m so sorry!"
The screaming startled Yumi. Tomomi was knelt down hugging Hayami’s body. She kept screaming in her high, childlike voice, but the booms from the storm muted her.
"Please don’t be angry with us! We didn’t know, Hayami!"
Kamiko grabbed her arm. She looked like she was about to start crying again. "Don’t say that!"
Yumi looked around in a panic. Everyone was still inside the hospital hiding from the storm. Still, it was only a matter of time until someone came out. If they did then it would be all over. "We need to go before someone sees us!"
"We can’t leave her here!" Tomomi wailed. "She’ll be so angry with us."
Yumi’s cheeks flushed with rage. "She’s dead, you lunatic. We’ll be dead too if we don’t go!"
"Let me stay with her. She’s going to be alone."
"What are you doing, Tomomi? Why are you being so selfish?"
Tomomi wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. "At least let me cover her up."
Silently, with the reverence of the color guard at a military funeral, Yumi eased Hayami’s shapeless grey hoodie out from under her head. The yellow light from the sign shaded the blood on the cotton an ugly rust color. Tomomi carefully laid it over Hayami’s tortured face, moving with the measured, graceful movements of a shrine maiden attending to her rituals.
Yumi couldn’t stop staring at Hayami’s shoes. Hayami put those shoes on this morning. Her slender fingers touched the lacings and worked the bindings earlier this evening. She didn’t plan on dying in them.
The torment game, the game Yumi created, killed her.
Tomomi held Hayami’s hand and rocked back and forth. She looked like she was about to bow over, press her forehead to the drowning cement of the sidewalk, and beg for forgiveness. Kamiko stared at the two of them, transfixed.
Yumi tugged on Kamiko’s arm, pulling her out of her trance. She nodded towards Tomomi. "Help me with her."
Kamiko nodded sharply. She knelt beside Tomomi and said, "It’s time to go."
Tomomi slowly got off her knees, clinging to Kamiko like an old woman as she allowed herself to be guided back to the van. Yumi climbed back in the driver seat while the other two squeezed into the passenger seat. Neither of them wanted to be in the back with all the blood. Yumi moved the transmission to drive and slowly began pulling away.
Tomomi glanced out the rear view mirror. Her eyes widened. "Do you see her?"
Yumi glanced back. The van was too big and she couldn’t see the ground beneath the bus stop. "What?"
"I...." Tomomi looked away. "Nothing.” She kept silent for a moment before saying, “We’ve done everything wrong."
Cold fingers slid down Yumi’s spine. The van rumbled underneath her and she fought the urge to stomp on the gas and get away as soon as possible.
She honked the horn several times. By the time the beleaguered hospital staff stepped outside and discovered the grisly package by the bus station, the van was long gone.
*****
The trio didn’t say anything on the ride back to Yumi’s house.
Later there would be the accusations, blame, and frenzied over-assessment of events. Did we leave any fingerprints? Any fibers from our clothes? How much did the storm wash away? But for the minutes after they left Hayami’s body discarded on the concrete like so much garbage, there was nothing but agonizing silence.
The storm pressed on, its unrelenting rage keeping all but a brave— or maybe just stupid— few off the roads. The lack of traffic and witnesses was the only good fortune the three of them received that evening.
They arrived back at Yumi’s home around twenty minutes later. Yumi expertly eased the van into the garage through stacks of drywall, cement, and industrial construction tools that looked like dangers from old video games. The house felt dry, dark, and silent. Yumi climbed out of the van, away from the meaty stink of blood, and rummaged through her dad’s stuff. The others followed suit, moving as if drugged.
"It’s all got to go. Clothes, jewelry, everything you’re wearing." Yumi said, rolling the large square charcoal konro grill into the garage. "Once everything is gone, go upstairs and take a shower."
"Wait, isn’t anyone home?" Kamiko said while playing with the bright blue charm at her wrist.
"My dad is.... out of town. Visiting relatives." Yumi replied, not looking at her friends. Her father was out all right, but he had just finished a big contract the day before and was probably still in Kabukichō, drinking with his friends.
"Oh. Okay."
"Scrub everything. Fingernails, hair, anything you touched her with. Everything else gets burned."
Kamiko laughed mirthlessly. "You’ve really put thought into things. How to get away with the perfect murder..."
"We didn’t kill anybody." Yumi glared at Kamiko. "But it looks like we did. No one would believe us if we told them what really happened.”
“What did happen?” Tomomi whispered. She stood next to the table saw and slowly rotated the blade with her finger.
“I . . .” Words failed Yumi. “I’m going to get some towels.”
They stripped off their outfits, each item of clothing landing on the floor with a wet plop. Off came the faux-uniform blazers, the layers of scarfs and sweaters that Tomomi always buried herself in, the trendy stylish tops Kamiko added her little punky flourishes to, the always expensive, always slightly out-of-date Shibuya 109 fashions Yumi was so fiercely, irrationally proud of. Thousands of yen worth of merchandise all went into the grill. Yumi found it darkly amusing that they couldn’t wait to get rid of the very items that once defined them.
"Should we..." Tomomi looked at Hayami’s blood-sticky cell phone.
Yumi looked at it, considered, sighed. "No. Clean it off and erase any photos of all of us together."
Once everything was off and the trio had wrapped themselves in Yumi’s ratty old towels, Yumi sprayed the pile with lighter fluid and dropped in a match. Even with the door opened to the back yard, it didn’t take long for the air to be filled with the choking smell of melting plastic and expensive fabric.
The girls stared at the fire, watching their treasures folding into themselves and turning to ash. Yumi looked at her friend’s faces as they watched the fire dance. Kamiko’s face, more predatory than attractive, appeared even sharper than usual in the flickering fire that cast shadows across every angle. She tensed at the popping embers like her entire body was a closing fist. Tomomi, who had never quite seemed to grow past junior high, watched the fire with hollow eyes. Even though she was almost sixteen, she still looked about twelve. But now her face had seemed to age six decades over the course of one night.
A lot of the clothes were too wet to burn. After several long minutes, Yumi poked the soggy pile with her one of her father’s crowbars, flipped it over, poured more lighter fluid on it, and reignited the fire.
Tomomi was the only one who didn’t seem absorbed by the conflagration. She stared at a corner of the garage, at a point where the light from the fire refused to penetrate. She kept staring at the void in the corner as if afraid something would coalesce in the darkness if she took her eyes off it.
Yumi reached into a plastic bin of cleaning supplies as the flames sputtered out. "There’s one more thing we have to do.”
She nodded over to the open rear door of the van. The blood looked like old motor oil against the rubber mats.
It was grisly work and it took a very long time.
*****
In the pre-dawn hours, when the other girls slipped silently away from the house, Yumi sat in her father’s living room chair and watched the sunlight slowly filter in through the slats in her bedroom window. She was wrapped in a towel and her wet hair tickled the back of her neck. The air smelled of her shampoo but there was something heavy and metallic underneath, something she couldn’t quite scrub away.
Yumi nestled back in the chair, felt the incredible fatigue slip into her bones, and finally allowed herself to weep.
Whatever adrenaline she’d been running off of since the night started was thinning away. Her muscles were sore from scrubbing the van and wiping the bathtub over and over again with bleach, trying to flush out the remnants of blood.
Hayami’s blood.
The denials she’d been repeating to buttress up her sanity crumbled in the cold light of dawn. They didn’t mean to kill Hayami and they couldn’t explain exactly what happened, but she was dead because of them.
Hayami died because Yumi invented the torment game.
They were going to get caught. There was something they overlooked, something microscopic and petty and fatal. Violent crime was rare in this region of Japan, murders nearly unheard of. The fact that they dumped the butchered body of a gorgeous (strange and exotic and slightly alien, but gorgeous) girl at a hospital would only bring more attention to the story. The police would be called in and it would be just a matter of time before someone very polite and official and firm came knocking on their door.
No one was supposed to get hurt.
I’m sorry, Hayami.
Alone in her large silent house, Yumi wept. Then she cleaned herself up and put on a fresh uniform. School started in a few hours and it would take her at least an hour to get in by train.
*****
Something followed Tomomi home.
She tiptoed through the front door, careful not to wake up her parents and crept into her room. She shut the door, locked it behind her, and sat quietly. All she heard was her breath rattling out of her chest.
Her eyes burned from fatigue, but Tomomi forced herself to keep them open. She backed herself into the corner, past her bed, underneath her desk. She curled up in the shadows, made herself invisible, and watched.
The darkness by her bedroom doors coalesced. She closed her eyes tight, afraid of what she’d see if she opened them again. From outside her little crawl space, she heard something that sounded like wet bare feet on the carpet.
Tomomi’s mother discovered Tomomi asleep under her desk a half hour later. Tomomi screamed when her mother tried to wake her up.
*****
Kamiko never went home.
Her phone kept ringing and she kept ignoring it. Message alert notifications chimed constantly. She flicked the phone’s silent tab and her pocket kept buzzing.
Every step felt like trudging through mud but she forced herself onward. Kamiko was a good student despite all her rebellious bravado and, like most exceptional Japanese students, she knew how to power through an all-nighter. So she walked, pausing at a vending machine to pick up an XL energy drink, and kept putting one foot in front of another, letting her body become a submarine that carried her exhausted mind through the fog of life.
It was eerie to wander through the streets of Kabukichō in the pre-dawn hours, when the only people in sight were bar employees closing up for the night and the hyper-efficient city works people. The crushing crowds wouldn’t show up for another few hours. Kamiko was reminded of an anime she saw as a little girl, a movie about a child lost in a forest and surrounded by eerie, shapeless forms flitting by in the corners of her vision.
Her feet guided her west along Hanamichi Dori Boulevard towards Kabukichō. She wasn’t paying attention to the fact that she was retracing her steps from earlier that evening, her brain having retreated into a comfortable numbness, but some odd compulsion kept her moving one foot in front of another, past the shuttered soba stands, empty cafes, and the bleary-eyed Nigerian barkers ending their evenings as touts for "health clubs."
Kamiko finally returned to herself as she turned down the narrow alleyways off Shinjukunishiguchi. Disinterested chinpara – the young thugs who gave the neighborhood a bad name - eyed her before letting her walk by. She laughed harshly. Usually when the girls came down this way, they would tease and taunt and flirt, trying to talk them into an evening out.
They always paid the most attention to Hayami.
Shit.
She pushed past them, continued down the alley, turned left and right and left again down the labyrinth. Finally she came to the abandoned soba stand. Their clubhouse, Yumi’s father’s abandoned project and the home of the torment game.
A cold knot of fear clenched in her stomach. Her bloody handprints were still on the cheap plywood door.
She reached out and touched the knob, her fingers numb and trembling. She didn’t mean to come here. It was the scene of the crime. What am I doing?
She opened the door.
The stench of old dried blood filled the air. Her stomach heaved.
She stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind her. The air in the room had a terrible weight to it, something more than typical stifling spring humidity. Flies droned around her head, landing on her face, kissing her ear.
Kamiko reached out and found the power cable dangling off the light they jury-rigged to the ceiling. She bent down, the floor sticking to her shoes, and plugged it into the socket.
The black candles, the lacy black fabric, and all the other cheap crap they bought as background props for the torment game were soaked in Hayami’s blood. It crisscrossed the narrow room in thin straight lines, dark against the white plaster walls. In the raw light of the uncapped bulb, the room was as stark and horrifying as a black and white crime scene photograph.
Kamiko’s stomach heaved at the sight of it. The flies, startled by the light, flitted wildly around the room. They alighted among the stains and did their mad dance of starvation in the air.
Kamiko brought her hand to her mouth as tears streamed from her eyes.
Last night, the game had begun to reach its crescendo and the room felt electric. The few unextinguished candles danced at the end of their wicks as if trying to flee while the storm outside threatened to batter down the door.
They usually called off the game when odd things started to happen. This time they pushed further. Who wouldn’t want to risk testing the boundary just a little bit more? Who wouldn’t want to see what the torment game was really capable of?
No one has the power to hurt you nearly as well as your best friends.
The candles in the room went supernova when the first tear slashed down on Hayami’s face. It flayed her flesh from the bottom of her chin to just above her top right lip. Her eyes went wide in shock, her hands flying up to her face, and she’d screamed. Her scream sounded wet and ragged, like someone had fed her broken glass.
Hayami looked directly at Kamiko as she was being ripped apart. She took a step forward and reached for Kamiko. Kamiko scooted back on the floor, screaming for Hayami to get away, and another tear ripped down from Hayami’s forehead through her left eye. She spasmed, more tearing sounds echoing in the tiny room, and then Hayami collapsed on the floor.
Kamiko stood in the spot where Hayami first split open. She imagined taking those wounds herself, every single tearing lash appearing on her skin. Her chest hurt, like her ribs had splintered inwards.
Kawagiri Kamiko, student of Ueno-juku High School, stood in the middle of the bloodstained mess for ten minutes with her eyes clenched shut. Part of her wanted to stay there forever, to disappear into the plaster floor and just stop existing. Instead she dragged herself to her feet, locked the door of the unfinished soba stand behind her, and started the long trek back home. Somewhere in the back of her head she knew she had to go to school, but the prospect of faking it for a day sounded appalling.
There must have been something in the wounded-animal way she walked that attracted the attention of the chinpara of the back alleys this time. They circled her like buzzing flies, making kissing sounds, speaking slurred words with smoker’s voices. They were saying stuff to Kamiko, no doubt unimaginably perverted things, but she was drowning so deep in her thoughts that they might as well have been calling from the moon. The little pricks, frustrated into disinterest, went back to watching the world go by. They leaned on the walls as she slunk off into the dawn.
She made it all the way to the Shinjuku station before throwing up. The crowd politely ignored her like she wasn’t even there.
*****
After school that day:
K: They’re talking about it all over the news.
Y: What?
K: They’re interviewing her teachers now.
Yumi stared at her phone’s faceplate. Her mouth went dry.
Y: Did the doctors at the hospital save her?
K: No.
A bottomless pit opened up in Yumi’s soul as the miniscule shred of hope she’d been clinging to fell away once and for all. She stopped, took a breath, and kept typing.
Y: What else did they say? Did anything get caught on camera?
K: No. The storm knocked out the cameras around the hospital.
Y: I see. Did they say anything about a witness around the neighborhood?
K: No. I don’t think so. The storm was too bad. Have you heard from Tomomi? I’ve been trying to text her all morning.
Y: No. I don’t think she went to school today.
K: I can’t stop crying. I was an hour late to school and I can’t control myself. Everyone looks at me like I’m crazy. I tell them I’m on my period. I’m barely holding together.
Y: Me too.
K: They’re going to catch us, aren’t they?
Y: I don’t know. Erase these messages.
*****
Tomomi didn’t go to school that day. After frightening her poor mother out of the room, she waited until the gray morning sky gave way to bright spring sunshine. She threw open her window shades, opened her closet doors, turned on all the lights in the room, and turned her BigBang! album up loud.
No more shadows took hold in the room.
Tomomi’s mom entered into her bedroom in the late morning. Tomomi ignored her and remained huddled under her blankets, staring at the computer monitor. The room was bathed in so much light that Tomomi felt like she was sitting in the heart of the sun.
"You’re missing school, Tomomi."
Tomomi didn’t respond. She flicked through another newspaper website. The stories were all vague and hungry for more details but the raw facts remained unchanged: a mutilated girl was left to die outside of a hospital.
"Are you feeling sick?"
"I’m just tired," she said as she closed her browser. Tomomi used the photo Hayami took of them in Akihabara as her desktop background. They were all smiling, making peace signs at the camera. Tomomi’s lips were turned in a cute little photogenic pout, the one she’d practiced to perfection in front of her bathroom mirror.
Tomomi’s mother walked into the room. Tomomi didn’t turn to greet her. She kept her eyes fixed on the photograph on her monitor.
Mrs. Murasaki put her hand on Tomomi’s forehead. Tomomi flinched at the touch.
"You don’t feel so healthy," Mrs. Murasaki said. "Did you get any sleep last night?"
"I’m sorry, Mom." Tomomi smiled weakly. "I was studying."
Mrs. Murasaki studied her daughter. "Okay. Lay down. I will bring you some tea."
"Okay," Tomomi said. She didn’t move away from the computer.
"Do you want me to shut the blinds so you can sleep?"
"NO!" Tomomi’s heart jumped. "No....I like the light. I just need to rest."
Mrs. Murasaki smiled faintly and stepped out of room. Tomomi heard her mother linger just outside her bedroom door. Mrs. Murasaki walked away after a time, leaving Tomomi mostly alone.
*****
"She’s not coming, is she?" Kamiko said as she idly played with Pepper’s fur.
"No, I don’t think she is. She hasn’t responded to any of the messages I sent her."
"Do you think she’s told anyone?"
"If she has, she has. Nothing we can do about it at this point."
"Do you..." Kamiko fed Pepper another carrot as she tried to decide on how to word her question. The little bunny took it and scampered off to a different corner of the enclosure, jealously guarding his new treat. "Do you want her to?"
Yumi rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Sometimes. I don’t know how I even made it through today. Sometimes I think it would be a relief."
The two girls were sitting in Usagi-chan, a small cafe in Harajuku. Customers who came in sat in a glass enclosure with one of the many pet rabbits the cafe kept. The prices were a little steep, the coffee was only so-so, but the bunnies were adorable. The girls loved it. They spent many a happy hour nuzzling the animals and taking snapshots of them on their phones. Kamiko stroked the mottled brown Holland Lop and said in a barely audible voice, "I can’t watch the news. I don’t even go online. I don’t want to hear anything about it."
Yumi didn’t say anything. She rubbed the soft flat ridge between Pepper’s ears. The rabbit hunkered down and basked in the attention.
"If I don’t hear anything about it, it’s like it didn’t happen.”
Yumi sighed. "It did, though. Do you think they informed Hayami’s family?"
"Probably," Kamiko said. She gently rubbed around Pepper’s ears. "I wonder what her mother is doing right now."
"Laughing."
Kamiko looked up at Yumi. Her eyes narrowed. Kamiko had a face built for anger. "That’s not funny."
They sat in silence for several moments, the only sound in the enclosure being Pepper’s teeth chattering in delight.
"Remember what Hayami said?" Kamiko whispered as she ran her fingers over Pepper’s fur. "She was sitting in here with us, holding this little guy..."
"She was the only one he’d let pick her up."
"Yeah. She said, ’Rabbits are nature’s victims. They can’t do much, they can’t defend themselves, and everything around them wants to eat them.’"
"’I feel like a rabbit sometimes,’" Yumi said, finishing the memory of Hayami’s words.
The enclosure filled up with oppressive silence.
"Did we murder her?" Kamiko whispered.
"No," Yumi replied, perhaps a little too quickly. "I don’t know what happened there, but we didn’t touch her."
"But that’s the whole point of the torment game, isn’t it? To hurt each other."
Yumi leaned back against the enclosure. Her head vibrated against the glass wall. "I don’t know anymore."
There was a pause. "I went back last night."
"What? Where? The hospital?"
"No." Kamiko let the word hang in the air for a second. "I went back to the soba stand."
"What? Why would you do that!?"
"I needed to see it. I guess.... it all felt like a dream."
"Did you touch anything? Did anyone see you?"
"There was so much blood, Yumi." Kamiko’s voice was nearly hysterical. "It’s all over everything."
"Kamiko, listen to me. Did anyone see you?"
"Some jerks. They were trying to flirt with me when I left."
“You idiot,” Yumi snapped, seething.“How could you be so selfish?”
"Don’t talk to me like that!"
The other customers in the cafe turned to the two girls in the enclosure and stared at them. Screaming arguments don’t usually happen at Usagi-chan. Pepper darted to a corner, his little gray body trembling in fear.
One of the teenage employees, a heavyset girl dressed in a frilly pink Victorian-style apron with a bunny embroidered on it, came quickly over to the enclosure. Her smile was cheerful and accommodating. "Is everything okay?"
"No, everything is not okay." Kamiko said in a threatening voice. "Go back to the counter, you fat..."
"Kamiko!" Yumi turned to the girl. "I’m sorry for my friend. We’re just, uh, it’s exams."
The girl nodded her head in a slight bow.
"We’re leaving. Let’s go, Kamiko."
Yumi turned behind her. Kamiko was hunched over by Pepper, stroking his fur over and over again. She was mumbling something to the terrified rabbit and crying.
"Kamiko?"
"I’m coming." Kamiko got to her feet, picked up her bag, and pushed her way past the shop girl. Yumi followed after giving one more nod of apology to the shop girl.
The shop girl picked up Pepper and held him gently to her chest, a small dark spot against her bright outfit. She watched the two girls leave the coffee shop.
"Freaks," she muttered under her breath. Pepper, unnoticed, nibbled at the lace on her apron.
*****
Tomomi finally fell asleep around noon, but that made things worse.
She floated in a sea of darkness. The sound of the tide filled her ears and pounded against her skull. She brought her hands to her ears, trying to block the pressure, but all she heard were screams.
Tomomi knew that something terrible was lurking underneath her, waiting to pull her under and drown. The water around her wasn’t water. It was warm and salt and old. She kept her mouth shut but it slid across her body, through her lips.
A great eye opened below her. It was huge, wide enough for whole cities to lie on it, set inside a slashed eye socket.
The eye focused on Tomomi, the milky white pupil dilating to take her in. Tomomi screamed. Blood filled her mouth, weighing her down, sinking her closer to her eye.
She woke up screaming. Her mother was at her bedside, wide eyed and terrified, shaking her awake.
Once the screaming stopped and the tears and snot were wiped away, Mrs. Murasaki started asking questions, then making demands. Somehow Tomomi found the strength to lie to her.
*****
"Kamiko! Stop!" Yumi yelled, pushing her way through the early-afternoon crowds on Cat Street. Kamiko kept running into people, bouncing around like an poorly-aimed pinball. It was hard to find space in Harajuku, but the cursing and rude behavior helped.
"Just...just go away. I don’t want to deal with you right now."
Yumi grabbed Kamiko’s arms. "What were you thinking, going back there?"
Kamiko’s muscles tensed under Yumi’s tight grip. "Let go of me."
Yumi looked her friend in the eye. No one liked Kamiko at her school. She acted like she wanted to punch out the world. Yumi let go, and Kamiko started walking away.
Yumi called, "Wait!"
Kamiko stopped, but did not turn around..
"We need to figure out what to do from here."
"I’m done listening to you. Just leave me alone."
"Kamiko..." Yumi said, exasperated.
Kamiko spun toward Yumi. "Because of you, Hayami is dead. Because of you, I’m probably going to jail. Because of you–"
"Sssssh!" Yumi said, swiveling her head around at the surrounding crowds; they gave the girls a wide berth, eyes averted from the scene. "I know that Hayami is . . . gone. I know that things are messed up right now. But I know that we didn’t kill her-”
"Then what did?" Kamiko let the words sit, and when Yumi didn’t— couldn’t— answer, she pressed on. "What if something followed us out of the game?"
"Guys?"
Yumi and Kamiko turned. Tomomi stood behind them, clutching her cell phone like a security blanket.
"Tomomi," Kamiko said.
"They told me you were at Usagi-chan. The girl said you were shouting at Pepper," Tomomi said.
"We were fighting. Pepper’s fine."
"Oh."
Yumi approached Tomomi like she was a wounded animal. "Tomomi, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you."
"I was, uh, resting."
"Did you tell anyone about what happened?"
Tomomi’s gaze was down. "No. No, I never would."
"Tomomi..."
"She said she didn’t say anything, Yumi," Kamiko said. She touched Tomomi’s hand. "Are you okay?"
"I’ve been reading the news. They said she was all cut up. They think some maniac killed her."
"Oh," Kamiko said.
"They said Hayami’s mother has been notified. They keep running her school picture."
"Did they say anything else in the paper?" Yumi said.
"No. I’ve been checking and rechecking. They think someone slashed her up with a knife and the police are looking for anyone who saw a big car drive off, but there’s nothing else. They keep saying that everyone was inside because of the storm."
Yumi exhaled. It felt like a death sentence being commuted.
"They keep saying that the doctors haven’t determined if she was...violated."
"Ew." Kamiko’s lip curled in disgust.
"You know what this means, right?" Yumi said. "We can get away with this."
"What?" Kamiko replied.
"They don’t know what happened. No one saw us. All we have to do is clean up the soba stand and..."
"Can’t we at least send a letter to her mother? Anonymously?" Tomomi said.
"Tomomi," Yumi said in the tones of someone addressing a simple child. "We need to make less of a trail, not more. Besides, her mother was a bitch. She’s probably happy Hayami’s gone."
"No!" Tomomi shouted in a voice worn down from fatigue. She caught herself and mumbled, "It must be awful not knowing."
Yumi looked over at Kamiko. She was twirling her hair around her finger, an uncharacteristically feminine gesture for her. Finally she said, "I think Yumi’s right. If we tell anyone, we go to jail. There’s no way we can talk ourselves out of this. Our lives would be ruined and our families..." Kamiko struggled for a second. "It will be difficult for our families."
Tomomi nodded. Her gaze stayed down. "I keep seeing things."
"What?"
"Ever since the game. I’ve been seeing..."
"What are you talking about?" Yumi said too forcefully.
"I don’t...I don’t know. I have such horrible dreams. And I see things in the dark." Tomomi wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve. "Am I going to go crazy?"
Kamiko and Yumi looked at each other. They couldn’t forget Tomomi’s terrified scream on the drive from the soba stand to the hospital.
Kamiko took Tomomi by the arm. "Let’s get out of here."
"Kamiko," Yumi muttered in exasperation. The knot tightened again in her stomach. It was all going to go wrong. If only Kamiko would listen.
"Yeah, yeah. We’ll call you once the police start breaking down our doors," Kamiko said.
"Goodbye Yumi," Tomomi said in a mousy voice.
Yumi watched the two of them disappear into the swirling, colorful mass of the Harajuku crowd. Around her, people talked to their friends, sipped coffee, and danced along the streets in their bright spring fashions, all without a care in the world.
San Francisco
Now
The exchange student program placed Tomomi in a house on Divisadero Street. It was bigger than any house she’d ever been in before, a bright light blue Victorian on a looping sunny street surrounded by other equally beautiful Victorians. It was like something out of storybook.
Tomomi continued unpacking, careful to keep her back to Mrs. Daniels. Mrs. Daniels wore her hair pulled back in a runner’s ponytail, and she had a way of moving that suggested an athlete’s grace even in her modest business attire. She had a Japanese face, but the way she carried herself wasn’t Japanese at all. The cognitive dissonance made Tomomi uncomfortable.
"I’m sure you’re jetlagged, but if you’re hungry we can take you out to dinner. We can do sushi if you like. A little taste of home. Jake and I know a good place nearby."
"Yes, thank you," Tomomi said. She struggled with ‘th’ sounds and the words came out awkwardly.
"Or we can do something else. There are all kinds of things in the neighborhood. The Mission is a five minute drive and they have the best Mexican food in California," Mrs. Daniels paused for a moment. When Tomomi didn’t react, she added, "Or burgers. It might be a little heavy, but you can have a genuine American burger. Would you like that?"
"Yes, thank you," Tomomi said. She struggled to understand. Mrs. Daniels ("My maiden name is Ogawa, so call me that if you’re more comfortable," she’d said outside the airport baggage claim) had a child’s grasp of Japanese, rusty from disuse and with honorifics more suited to addressing a parent or a teacher.
"Well, let me know if you get hungry," Mrs. Daniels said as she leaned at the doorframe.
"I would..." Tomomi started in halting English. She had been practicing all summer and felt reasonably comfortable in calm academic settings, but she still was self-conscious about actually communicating. There were so many confusing rules. "I would like to eat. Something...." She hesitated before switching back to Japanese "Something small, please."
"Of course,” Mrs. Daniels said, all smiles. “I’ll let you get settled in."
She started to leave, closing the door behind her.
"No!" Tomomi said a little too sharply. "Please leave it open."
If Tomomi’s tone or behavior startled Mrs. Daniels, she didn’t show it. "Of course. Please let me know if you need anything."
Then she was gone and Tomomi was alone again.
Everything was different here. The signs were all in a different language, the city was shaped completely different, and there were so many different faces. Tomomi felt disconnected and very far from home. The only people she knew here were her friends and…
Well, things weren’t exactly friendly with Yumi and Kamiko these days.
Her phone buzzed.
Tomomi looked at the touch screen on the phone. Yumi’s picture popped up one the lock screen. White-hot anger flashed through her. At least let me unpack first.
Tomomi caught herself. She never used to get angry so easily.
She finished unpacking everything in her suitcases and set her laptop on the nightstand. It pinged awake from sleep mode as she unfolded it. She replaced the photo of her friends that had served as the desktop background with a photo of Tomomi’s family from two years ago. They had all gone down to the yuki-matsuri, snow festival, to view the ice sculptures. The photo caught them all bundled up against the cold, her mother and father huddled close to her on both sides, cheeks and noses red from the cold as they smiled. Snow drifted softly down as the photo was taken, filling the frame with tiny white spots.
Tomomi thought about her departure from Nagoya airport just a few hours ago. Her mother asked about her passport and her phone, practical questions. Her father walked through the airport on the opposite side of her mother. You could have fit an entire universe in the distance between them.
Right before Tomomi went through security, her father told her to call if she needed anything. Then he looked at her with big sad eyes.
"Call us if you run out of money."
That was the last thing her family said to her.
Tomomi studied the photo for another moment and then closed the laptop gently. She was tired from the cramped eleven-hour flight, tired from walking through a place that seemed designed to make her feel lost, tired from fumbling through her first meeting with the Daniels in the terminal, tired of being someplace that was at once alien and familiar (How many movies had she seen that were set in America? She’d always imagined California would be nothing but sunshine and blonde women and movie stars), tired of the last few months of her life.
She shook her head to clear it.
Once she was done settling in, she checked the closet, saw the fresh school uniforms, and turned the light switches on and off to make sure every bulb worked.
*****
The Daniels took Tomomi to a diner near their home, a place on Church Street called Sparky’s. Tomomi liked the name and had rolled it around in her tongue as if tasting it. It was nestled in the Castro, and it had a fifties-style vibe, all Formica tables and plush red booth seats. The retro shtick was enhanced by the surrounding decor, enlargements of old advertisements full of double-entendres that were mostly lost on Tomomi ("Gay Tony’s Peaches. The juiciest!").
It was nine o’clock by the time the Daniels got there, but the place was packed. Tomomi marveled at the crowd. It was a mix of gay couples, mostly toned young men in tight clothes and close cropped haircuts, and groups of drunken twenty year olds layered against the fog. The streets outside roared with conversation and laughter.
The menu was overwhelming. Tomomi recognized a word here and there; ’hamburger’, ’sandwich’, ’coke’, but they were tiny points of sense in the sea of gibberish.
"What is this?" she said, handing the menu to Mrs. Daniels.
"It means.... um..." she said. Her hands were slender and expressive, and they danced when she struggled with a Japanese word. "It means that it’s hot. Like, spicy."
"Oh," Tomomi said.
"Do you like spicy food?" Mrs. Daniels said.
"Sometimes," Tomomi said. She kept her eyes down. There was something about being the center of attention among strangers that made her skin crawl.
"Is that the fiery chicken sandwich?" Mr. Daniels-- or Jake, as he’d insisted Tomomi call him-- turned to Tomomi and said slowly, "I like that sandwich. It’s very good."
Tomomi smiled weakly. "I would like that. Please."
The Daniels looked at their menus and talked to each other. Their English quickened and Tomomi struggled to keep up. It was just a word here and there, obvious stuff like hamburger, good, soda.
What am I going to do? I am nowhere near as good at English as I thought I was.
A wiry young man in a V-neck shirt and carefully mussed hair came to their table. He was young and amazingly suteki. "Hi guys, do you still need a few more minutes? Can I get you drinks or anything?"
"No, I think we’re ready to order." Mr. Daniels said. "I want the turkey wrap, extra mustard, and can I get a fruit salad instead of fries with that?"
"Uh huh..." the waiter said. He looked like a slightly more olive-skinned and sexier Harry Potter. Tomomi couldn’t stop staring at him.
"Can I get a turkey burger, no cheese?" Mrs. Daniels looked at the menu for a moment more, torn in moral indecision, before saying, "What the hell, can I get onion rings with that?"
The waiter laughed. "Sure. I shouldn’t either, but I always get them." He turned his attention to Tomomi. "What can I get for you?"
Tomomi panicked and looked over at the Daniels. They smiled reassuringly. She stepped off the cliff. "I, uh,want a chicken burger. Please. With fries."
"And make it good," Mr. Daniels said. "It’s the first meal she’s had in the United States."
The waiter broke out into a wide smile. "Welcome to San Francisco!" He gently rested his hand on her shoulder, which sent a not-unpleasant spark through her body. "Where are you coming from?"
"Tokyo," Tomomi said. She smiled despite herself. "I came for school."
"You’re going to love it here. I just moved here from Boulder six months ago and I love it. San Francisco has a way of making orphans feel at home really quickly."
Tomomi smiled politely. She understood maybe an eighth of what he said, but she knew the word orphan.
"Yeah, we’re her host family. She’s staying with us for the semester. Maybe longer." Mr. Call-Me-Jake Daniels said.
"Are you from Japan, too?" the waiter asked Mrs. Daniels.
"My parents are. My Japanese is really bad, but I can practice with her." Mrs. Daniels smiled at Tomomi.
"Anyway, let me go put these orders in. I hope you enjoy the city!"
"Tomomi. My name is Tomomi." She’d been practicing the phrase for weeks but it still came out awkwardly. The smile she flashed didn’t. The waiter smiled back before he left.
*****
How could anyone eat so much food?
Tomomi had been warned about the portions, but they were massive. The fiery chicken sandwich on its own was enough for two meals, not even including the gigantic pile of fries. It was all good, delicious in fact, but just looking at it made her stomach knot up.
"So what made you want to come to America, Tomomi?" Mr. Daniels said between bites.
Because I killed one of my friends and nobody wants me around.
She couldn’t say that, clearly, so instead she spit out the well-rehearsed excuse: "I want to go to school at Tokyo University. It would help if I lived abroad."
She had practiced that sentence dozens of times, anticipating the question. Tomomi pronounced ’abroad’ with soft, rounded vowel sounds.
"Do you know what you want to study?"
Tomomi hadn’t really thought about that question in a long time. Tokyo University was a pipe dream anyway. There was no way any of the top three universities would touch someone as controversial as her. Even though she had been exonerated, the stink of controversy would follow her forever.
"Tomomi?" Mrs. Daniels said. She looked concerned.
"Sorry," Tomomi said, slipping back into Japanese. "How do you say ’arts’ program?"
Mrs. Daniels looked at her, confused. Tomomi repeated herself. When Mrs. Daniels turned to her husband in bewilderment, Tomomi mimed drawing on a sketchpad. Mrs. Daniels eyes lit up in recognition. "Ooooh. Art!"
"Yes." Tomomi bobbed her head.
"What kind of artists do you like? Rembrandt? Picasso? Andy Warhol?" Mr. Daniels said as he speared a grape with his fork.
"I like..." Tomomi said, then stopped. She could have spoken on the subject for hours, but the diner was too loud, the Daniels were strangers, and she was exhausted. "I like manga."
Mrs. Daniels smiled. "You know, Jacob works in the arts department at EA. He’s the head of a department that does object modeling. A lot of those guys have fine arts training."
"Yeah. If you’d like, I can take you down to the campus in Redwood City."
Some tiny part of Tomomi’s inner okatu squealed in delight, but the rest of her wanted to go back to her room in the unfamiliar storybook house, lock the door, and sleep for a million years. "Yes please."
Satisfied at finally striking common ground, the Daniels talked about themselves and their city. They promised to show Tomomi the sites around the Bay and help her get settled in. Tomomi sat with a polite smile plastered on her face as she let the words wash over her. She ate until she was past full, trying not to upset her hosts by not finishing, but her stomach ached (the sandwich was good, but spicy and covered in mayonnaise and very rich) and she felt her muscles slacken with fatigue. If the Daniels noticed her discomfort, they didn’t say a thing. They were too busy telling her how wonderful her time with them would be.
*****
Tomomi woke up around 3 AM.
It was the jet lag. Of course it would be. As painfully tired as she was, years of rigid private school education instilled an alarm clock in her head. Her body started forcing itself awake, preparing for the morning routines.
It took her a moment to calm herself down. She wasn’t at home. The woman sleeping down the hall wasn’t her mother. The bed she slept in wasn’t hers.
And it was still dark out.
Fear shot through her. She had been good for a long time. No panic attacks, no incidents, nothing like that in months. Some of it was sheer force of will, some of it was the shame her friends laid on her, and the rest was the comforting walls of ritual and pharmaceuticals that she built around herself. And the first defense was simple.
Avoid the dark.
There is nothing out there.
She fumbled on the nightstand, head under the covers, before she remembered that it wasn’t her nightstand and her therapist-prescribed stash of eszopicione wasn’t there.
Tomomi peeked out from under the covers. The streetlight was directly outside the large window above her bed and its sickly yellow light passed through the thin curtains and into the room. The shadows pitched at jagged angles on the walls, like shards of broken obsidian.
She glanced over to her closet, directly across from the foot of her bed. She was too tired after dinner to make sure it was closed. The clothes Tomomi hung up the previous night were pushed to one side and her brand new Catholic school uniforms were pushed over to the other side.
There was something unfamiliar in the closet. In the darkness, she saw an oversized gray hoodie over a simple white button-up uniform shirt.
Black hair spilled over the white shirt. Dark stains mottling the clothes.
Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it
Tomomi buried herself under the covers. She curled up into a ball and pulled the blankets over her head, making a little fabric cocoon. Her eyes closed tight as she rocked under the covers and her heart slammed into her ribs.
There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there.
She refused to hear the shuffling from the closet door. She refused to hear the sound of footsteps approaching her bed. She refused to imagine that ruined face looking at her.
There was nothing in the room with her. She was just going crazy and she was holding it together as best she could and sometimes she saw stuff but it was just her stupid broken brain and why couldn’t she stop being crazy.
Someone sat at the foot of her bed.
Tomomi screamed.
Slender fingers wrapped around Tomomi’s ankle. She felt their cold strength through the thick quilt.
Tomomi lashed out and kicked her feet with wild panic. The covers flew off the top of her head and she kept her eyes shut tight. Looking at dead girls drove you mad.
"Tomomi?"
The lights flicked on. Tomomi opened her eyes. The room was as bright as dawnwiththe friendly shade of blue walls and the cheerful white furniture that filled the space with a neutered childish cutesiness ("We’ve been trying for a baby but we haven’t had a lot of luck," the Daniels had explained).
The Daniels stood in the doorway, Mr. Daniels in flannel bottoms and a white undershirt and Mrs. Daniels in an oversized UC Berkeley tee shirt. They looked at her the way Tomomi’s mom did when things started getting bad.
"Is everything all right, Tomomi? We heard you screaming," Mr. Daniels said. He pronounced her name TOE-mo-mee.
"I’m sorry," Tomomi said before remembering to switch to English. "I had dreams." She peeked up at the closet. Just a handful of coats, a few dresses, and four uniforms that looked didn’t look anything like the ones Hayami used to wear.
Let the dead stay dead.
You’re running out of homes, Tomomi.
She forced a weak smile, but couldn’t look the Daniels in the eye. She felt even more vulnerable, a tiny teenage girl surrounded by heavy oversized quilts in a made-over nursery a million miles from home.
"It’s okay, Tomomi," Mrs. Daniels said in Japanese, pronouncing Tomomi’s name correctly. "You’ve had a long day and a lot has happened. I would have a hard time sleeping too.”
Mrs. Daniels crossed over the room toward Tomomi’s bed. She smoothed the covers out at the foot of the bed where Hayami sat."Are you going to be okay for the rest of the night?"
No, I’m not going to be. Stay with me. Talk with me until dawn. Don’t leave me alone.
"Yes." She bobbed her head in apology. "I’m sorry I disturbed you."
Mr. Daniels smiled paternally at her. "It’s okay, Tomomi. Just try to get some sleep. You’ve had a long day."
"I will. Thank you."
Mr. Daniels left the room. Mrs. Daniels lingered for a moment and looked down at the alien girl staying in her unborn child’s room. "I know it’s a lot to take in, but we’re here to help. You’ll let us know if you need anything else, right?"
"Yes, thank you."
Tomomi stayed up for another hour or so after that. She kept the lights on and she opened up her monitor. She checked and rechecked her social networks, watched an episode of Sayonara Zetsuba Sensei, and started typing an entry into her blog before realizing she didn’t like what she was writing and deleting it in thudding keystrokes.
Morning light slowly crawled across Divisadero Street. Tomomi’s eyes, raw from fatigue and dry from staring at the monitor, grew heavy. She checked the closet one more time before crawling back under the sheets.
Tomomi used to dream about the accident often. Every time she closed her eyes she would smell the gore-stained rubber of the van’s interior, hear the sound of the rain like a thousand fingers tapping on the roof above her, and see Hayami’s torn, twisted face glaring at her through the darkness out the car’s window.
Time had ebbed away the vividness of the image and now she just dreamed of the raindrops.
*****
Kamiko sat on the big swinging chair outside on the terrace at 3:17 in the morning. She smoked a cigarette while cars threaded up and down Market Street. There was still plenty of traffic even at this hour of night. At this distance the twinkling headlights of the cars looked like a river of stars.
She scrolled thorugh her phone’s recent-call log. Three calls to Tomomi, all unanswered.
"What are you still doing up?" Molly said. She rubbed at her raccoon-dark eyes and stretched.
"Couldn’t sleep," Kamiko said, not looking away from the view.
"Something wrong?" Molly yawned. Kamiko shrugged. She hadn’t made much of an effort to adjust to the time difference, and her nocturnal sleep pattern and coffee-cigarette-Black Black chewing gum diet made her jittery.
"My friend is being an idiot," Kamiko said, the words edged with something vicious and bitter.
"Someone back home?" Molly said. She curled up on the swing next to her. "What’s going on?"
"She’s-" Kamiko struggled for a second. "She’s not strong. She had trouble back home.
"That sucks." Molly yawned again. "But you’re here now. You’ll have a good time."
Kamiko fished out her pack of cigarettes from the pocket of the hoodie Molly loaned her.
"Are you ready for tomorrow?" Molly asked, lighting up next to her.
Kamiko looked out at the city lights and wondered the same thing, not without some trepidation. Up until this point the idea of going back to school was an abstraction, something implausible coming up that would break up the splendor and freedom of her American vacation. Tomorrow meant the slate was well and truly erased. This was her new home, this was her new school, this was her new life.
"I guess so," Kamiko said, and took another drag. The cherry tip of her cigarette was another tiny light in San Francisco’s cityscape. "I am a little scared."
"Don’t be. I’ll be there,” Molly assured her. She then stretched once more, pouring her whole body into a big yawn. "I need to get some sleep, Kamiko."
"I will be there in a bit. I want to stay up a little longer and call my mom when she wakes up."
“Okay. G’night."
"Goodnight," Kamiko replied. She listened to the scratchy sound of Molly sliding the glass door closed behind her.
The view from Kamiko’s borrowed home was spectacular.
Molly’s family was rich. They had to be, to take in an exchange student like her. The school was very expensive and hosting must have been taxing, but they didn’t seem to be overly burdened by Kamiko’s presence. Molly’s parents were tending to some business in Napaand they’d left the girls with a car, a house, and ridiculous amounts of cash. Molly treated San Francisco like her personal playground, and she was generous in sharing it with Kamiko. It was all magical, but nothing beat ending the night on the rear porch overlooking the city.
Kamiko drank in the city with her eyes as it spread out below her. It was much smaller than Tokyo, but it had a unique beauty. She struggled with the language but she was getting along better than she expected. A lifetime of exposure to American cinema and music and pop culture helped the process along.
She was a new person. She could recreate herself here.
After she finished half her pack of cigarettes, she tucked the remainder back into her sweater and carefully slid the rear door open. She didn’t turn off the porch light until she locked the door behind her, trapping the darkness of night behind thick glass.
*****
Yumi was cold.
She left for school very early, well before classes started. Mr. Nishiyama had offered to drive her, but Yumi wanted to figure her way to school by bus. She liked the idea of knowing the city, of letting her feet fall on pavement and finding her own way around.
She’d gotten public transit directions on the map app on her phone, which chimed a cheerful little tune as the GPS adjusted for each turn of the bus. Travel one kilometer. Right on Sloat. left on Market.
The bus moved too fast. Street names that seemed so easy to read on her tiny plastic monitor zipped by. She felt flashes of panic. Was that where I was supposed to go? What if I missed my stop?
Yumi’s panic grew with every new turn. Her pulse thudded in her ears. Her hands curled around the cord. The bus lurched forward, she tightened her grip to steady herself, and Yumi accidentally pulled the cord.
Everyone on the bus turned to look at her.
"Gomen nasai," Yumi said before correcting herself. "Sorry."
Nobody on the bus looked particularly sympathetic.
She kept her eyes down in shame and missed her station. She got off a half-mile away and had to walk her way back to her connection. Even with her transit catastrophe, she was still a good hour earlier than the other kids.
"Always be early," her father used to say. "It shows diligence. Show up, show up on time, and do a good job. That’s how I made it."
Our Lady of Mercy High School was situated at the top of San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood. The Victorian houses lining the streets were huge by the standards of a city, built tall and narrow and interspersed with tiny, expensive-looking grocery stores and coffee shops.
Alone, she waited in front of the school. A normal new student would have stood before the main building in awe and marveled at the pristine marble facades and the way the structures were interconnected by iron walkways like fat spider webs. Yumi’s gaze remained outward, waiting for an administrator or a teacher the way a dog waits for their owner to come home.
Yumi could barely see the end of the school buildings through the heavy fog that rolled over the streets. It was like she was alone on some dreamlike alien vista. The chill crept along her legs and raised little gooseflesh kisses on her skin.The school uniform, a dark navy blazer with a thin white button-up blouse and severe gray skirt, was clearly chosen for style and not for warmth.
She found a discrete corner away from the front door, hidden in a little concrete alcove, and wept. It felt like she was falling down some endless depth of loneliness. She kept crying in silence as the city awoke around her.
Yumi dug through her bag, wiped her face with tissues, and reapplied her make-up. Around the corner, she could hear the first people arriving. American voices, swirled through the fog. The city woke up around her.
*****
"She looks terrible," Kamiko said as she peered over at Yumi through the early morning crowd.
"Mmmm..." Tomomi said. Her eyes were down as she pulled a loose thread from the sleeve of her blazer.
"She looks like she’s about to break apart. Have you talked to her since you arrived?"
"No. Not really."
Kamiko watched Yumi carefully from her peripheral vision, worried that Yumi would catch her looking. They were still early and the large double doors in front of the building hadn’t opened yet. Other students were slowly trickling in in groups of twos and threes to wait. They gathered around one another and talked excitedly in a high singsong jabber that Kamiko could barely follow.
"Are you ready for this, Tomomi?"
"Mmmm." Tomomi wound the frayed thread around her finger and twisted it until angry red lines appeared in her skin. "I suppose so. Not like we have much of a choice."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. She’s coming over."
Yumi spotted them and waved. The bright smile on her face seemed forced. She skipped over to meet them.
"Hi!" Yumi said with forced good cheer.
"Hi, Yumi," Tomomi mumbled.
"How’s it going?" Kamiko said in a disinterested tone as she watched the other students milling around. Curious looks were being thrown in their direction. They were being sized up.
"Kamiko?" Yumi said.
"Yeah?"
"I’m really happy you’re both here with me." There was a crack in Yumi’s voice, a slip of the happy mask. "It’s, uh, easier."
Kamiko forced a small smile and bowed her head in acknowledgement. Yumi returned the gesture.
*****
Tomomi missed the exchange between the two. She was too busy trying to keep herself calm.
Reflecting on it later, she would firmly decide that she was stressed from the prospect of starting classes. She’d never really been a people person and being surrounded by a bunch of non-Japanese quickly wore her out. The culture shock never stopped; the only respite from all the foreignness was two people that part of her never wanted to see again.
Tomomi hadn’t had one of her serious panic attacks in a long time. Sure, she’d see fleeting glimpses at the corner of her vision in those rare pockets of solitude you sometimes find in Tokyo, but nothing like this. She had to hold herself together to keep from trembling or crying out.
The last few months had turned Murasaki Tomomi into a master of repression. If she were really open to gifts the torment game had given her, she would have seen Hayami standing beside her.
Staring at her former friends.
Screaming.