It’s not a joke, kid. I don’t care how cute you are. Not every guy is going to let you lead him around by the nose.
“I’ve been sitting here listening to you mixing actual places with imaginary ones, like they were both part of the same reality,” Kotaro said. “Nameless Land, Tower of Inception—they’re just imaginary locations. You know that.”
She gazed back at him, cool and unruffled. “They are part of the same reality. They’re all regions.”
“Quit talking nonsense!”
“Why is it nonsense? The world exists and it’s real. Other worlds are real, but they don’t exist. That’s the only difference. But as regions, they’re on the same footing. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Sorry. No.”
“What about The Chronicles of Narnia?”
Mika loved this series of fantasy novels. She’d bought the books after seeing the movies. She’d said the books were even more fascinating.
“Lots of people are familiar with the Kingdom of Narnia. They know about the things that happen there and the creatures who live there. They talk to each other about the stories and reinforce each other’s interest.”
“But they don’t exist.”
“They’re still real.”
“There’s a huge difference.”
“Are you sure? Can you dismiss something that doesn’t exist as meaningless? Or say nonexistent things don’t affect us? Are things that don’t exist just for enjoyment or killing time in this world of ours? Are you ready to say they’re just illusions we consume when and as we feel like it?”
I’m talking to the Cheshire Cat again.
“That’s not what I meant. Of course things that don’t exist can affect us. Sometimes even physically,” Kotaro said.
“Like Galla.” Yuriko’s gaze was level. “I can see why an encounter like that would be so confusing. But you didn’t run and tell your friends about your strange experience and have fun with it and leave it at that. You didn’t write it off as some hallucination. You want to understand what happened to you. You want to know more. That’s dangerous. That’s why I had to find you.”
“You said you might have to eliminate me. Is curiosity a crime?”
“It is in this case. It’s childish.”
“I don’t need to hear that from you.” He looked grim. “I want to bring Kenji back.”
“He’s not dead. He made a deal with Galla of his own free will and he’s satisfied. Do you still want to bring him back?”
“You don’t know what he was thinking. You’re just guessing.”
“You accept statements like that from people all the time without demanding proof. Can’t you accept my explanation this once?”
Can’t we just chalk up what we saw to a bad dream?
“Kotaro, you told me you made eye contact with Kenji when you saw him that night.”
“Yes. From within the scythe.”
“Did he look like he wanted you to save him? Could you feel him saying ‘Save me, get me out of here’?”
“I don’t know. I still couldn’t believe everything that was happening.”
“That’s a tricky answer.” She was right. Kotaro looked away at the grass beneath his feet.
“What would make Kenji do a deal with a creature like that?” he murmured.
“It would’ve been his secret. Something only he knew.”
“He didn’t look like he was carrying around a secret that big.”
“If he had, it wouldn’t have been a secret, would it?” She’d scored a point.
“If I really, really, wanted to know why Galla’s here and what Kenji’s doing right now, do you think Galla would appear before me?”
Yuriko’s shoulders sagged. She sighed. “That would be like crossing a minefield wearing snowshoes. Is that what you want?”
Kotaro laughed at the simile, but Yuriko wasn’t smiling.
“You say I’m acting like things that exist and things that don’t are the same,” she said. “How are you any different? You’re treating Galla and the region she comes from as if it exists, but it doesn’t, even though it’s still real.”
Another point scored.
“… What is a wolf?” Kotaro asked.
“What’s this? Are you trying to change the subject?”
“Are you trying to dodge the question by answering a question with a question?”
Now she looked genuinely irritated. Kotaro scratched his head. “I’m only asking because I really want to know. What are wolves? People who get mixed up with regions that are real but don’t exist?”
Yuriko didn’t answer immediately. She seemed to be pondering an answer.
“No, that’s not right. Not everyone who has that experience becomes a wolf.” She paused again, as though searching for the right words.
“In stories, people sometimes encounter a power so strong that it changes them completely. Whether it changes them for the better or the worse depends on time and circumstance. They can go either way, because good and evil are two sides of the same coin. But if they change for the worse, it leads to a great tragedy. To conflict.”
“Conflict? You mean war?”
“People oppose each other. Or one group of people subjugates another and oppresses them. There is no form of conflict that doesn’t manifest.
“The source of these dangerous stories is sealed in the Nameless Land, the origin of all stories. But sometimes the seal is broken. Even if the source is sealed, the countless stories that branched off from the source when it was unbound take the form of copies. We wolves search for copies of those dangerous stories. There are many of us here in our world, in this region. This is our mission—to hunt the dangerous stories that infest the Circle, and their copies.”
Kotaro looked so astonished that Yuriko was forced to laugh. “Oh come on, it’s not that bad.”
“That’s book burning. Hunting for books? Isn’t that an attack on freedom of speech?”
“No one’s suppressing anybody’s freedom of speech. All we do is let others know about these dangerous copies and try to keep them out of their hands as best we can. If people are infected with the poison in one of these books, we find them and help them understand that they’re not weaving their own lives. They’re living a story that has obsessed them. We try to bring them back to the real world. That’s all we do. That’s all we can do.
“But sometimes,” she murmured, “we’re too late.” The black of her pupils seemed to deepen into a profound darkness.
“The Nameless Land and the Tower of Inception are immensely old regions, so old that it’s impossible to say when they were created. It’s not like someone—a specific weaver—created them. They arose from the hearts of countless people, from a vague sense that stories and language originated in worlds like that. People are in awe of them, though they don’t have a definite image of them. Those feelings spawned the Nameless Land and the Tower of Inception. They didn’t become history, or religion, or superstition. They remain as they were when they were created, from time out of memory.
“It’s a simple allegory, nothing more, nothing less. That’s why it’s so powerful. It’s not dangerous, but it has tremendous power.”
Kotaro looked at her closely. “If these regions are so old, is that where the dead are? Could that be where people go when they die?”
Yuriko stared at him blankly. “That’s a strange question. What would make you think dead people go to the sources of stories and words?”
“There’s this little girl. She thinks Galla is the god of death because of those huge black wings.”
Kotaro told her about the girl named Mana. He told her everything, including the idea about the world of the dead that Mana had planted in his mind.
Partway through his story, Yuriko closed her eyes. When he finished, she opened them. “Explaining
a mother’s death to a five-year-old must be the hardest thing in the world,” she said gently.
“You’re right.”
“But you told her just what she needed to hear. And you were right when you decided that the world of the dead is real because of the words of the living.”
“So … ?”
“Tell her about the world of the dead in your own words.”
Your mother is a star. She’s in heaven. She’s always looking down on you. You can’t see her anymore, but she’s right beside you, even now.
“Tell her whatever makes sense to you. What matters is what is in your heart. That’s what makes it a story.
“Since I became a wolf, I’ve come to see it this way: stories came into being so people could resist death.” Her voice had the strength of conviction. “Life is limited. It’s once only. Death comes to everyone without exception, fair or not. Humanity created stories to triumph over the terror of death and help them overcome the pain of loss, telling and retelling them from generation to generation. Stories of all kinds, stories about individuals, about the history of nations. Short stories and epic sagas. They all have the same function.
“Now, many of these stories talk about the land of the dead. People die, but that’s not the end. There is a next life. Maybe they’re reincarnated, or they live on in heaven. The point of the stories is that death is not the end. The people we love don’t cease to exist. That’s what the stories tell us. But they’re not true.” Her voice slowly took on quiet strength.
“Death is final. It is the end. Everything that lives dies, and the dead exist nowhere and will never return. But stories are the struggle against that truth. They deny the truth. They comfort the living, encourage them, and give them the light and the hope to go on living. That is the significance, the meaning, of why there are stories—to give us the creativity and imagination to resist the truth that life is once only.
“Fight death. That’s what stories tell us. They shout it in the face of naked reality. We will not disappear. That’s why we tell them. They’re the best way to say that. So tell Mana your story in your own words. ‘Mama’s in heaven. She’s always with you.’ Whatever fits. Tell her what you hope is true. But if your story gives her hope, you must watch over her after that. If you can’t be with her all the time, then at least pray for her.”
“Pray? Why?”
“Pray that when she’s a healthy adult, she’ll be able to understand that the story you told her was not true. Her mother is dead and gone. The death of another is terribly hard to bear, and very sad. But pray that she’ll realize that her mother is gone and will never, ever come back to her again.”
She looked steadily at Kotaro. The darkness that had flitted across her pupils was gone now, or perhaps veiled.
“But she’ll also understand that the story you told her was the truth, for her. ‘My mother is still here, in my heart.’ That’s enough.
“The dead live in our hearts. That is the afterlife. The living cherish this thought. Pray that she becomes someone who can believe that.”
“Pray that when she grows up, she can understand?”
Yuriko nodded. “Adults live by weaving stories. They also live by escaping them. When they get trapped in a story, they end up the way you are now.” Yuriko suppressed a chuckle. “You’re funny, Kotaro. You understand things perfectly, but you don’t know you understand, so you’re confused. Have you noticed?”
How can I notice what doesn’t make sense?
“Your trying to find Galla is no different from telling a five-year-old girl a story about the afterlife to give her strength, then trying to go and actually find it.”
“But I met Galla!”
“You encountered something real that doesn’t exist, that’s all.” She reached out and touched his arm. “Do you understand? It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault. It’s not because you’re special or anything. It was just an accident, that’s all. The mistake would be to take it further.
“Those desires Galla is harvesting—those cravings. They don’t have anything to do with you. You should be thankful for that.”
Kotaro frowned. “There are things I want. I have a few complexes too.”
“I’m not talking about those kinds of desires. You didn’t lose your home. You’re not dying of hunger or thirst. You haven’t been stripped of your dignity as a person.”
He brought his face closer to hers and answered between clenched teeth. “Are you talking about the homeless? Are you saying I can’t understand what they want?”
Yuriko looked at him with gentle eyes and smiled. “Do you think you can?”
Kotaro felt like a boxer whose best punch just connected with empty space. His mouth was open, but his voice wouldn’t come.
“Are you really so unimaginably unhappy?” she asked.
“Well … not exactly.”
“Maybe you have some cravings that are more dramatic. Getting revenge, say. Something you want so bad you’d be willing to give up a few years of life to get it.” She peered at him closely. “How about raising someone from the dead?”
For the first time, Kotaro felt something dreadful emanating from the attractive young girl on the bench next to him.
It wasn’t that he was alarmed by what she said. It was how her eyes looked when she said it, as if she were seeing something. Whatever it was, it was something in her memory. She was seeing something in the past.
When Kotaro had been a junior in high school, he’d dated a girl who had lost her younger sister in a fire when they were both very young. Now and then her eyes would take on the same look. Even when the subject was totally unrelated, or when they were watching a movie or getting a burger and fries at McDonald’s, she’d suddenly get that look, and it had always chilled him to the marrow. She’s remembering. He’d never know what triggered it, but there she’d be, remembering what she’d seen and heard the night of the fire—what she’d had to see and had to hear.
It happened too often, and after half a year they’d broken up, though she’d been a pretty girl and very gentle.
“Listen, um, Yuriko …” He spoke softly. She blinked again, returning to reality, and turned to look at him. Her eyes were normal now. But before he could say more, she stood up.
“Anyway, that’s my advice to you,” she said crisply. “Mind your business and don’t do anything reckless. That company you work for? Aren’t they helping the police catch that serial amputator?”
Kotaro wasn’t sure whether he cared to hear that sort of advice from this particular girl. “We don’t work for the police.”
“But you do monitor what goes on, on the net.”
“We have lots of other things to cover.”
“Then cover them. Please.”
That was when it hit him. “Aren’t you wolves supposed to be hunting killers like that too?”
Yuriko was already turning to go, but she spun round so fast her ponytail slapped her cheek. “What do you mean?”
“We’re talking about a serial killer. The evidence indicates he didn’t have a particular grudge against his victims. He’s in the grip of his own personal obsession. To satisfy it, he’s killing people. It doesn’t matter who. His victims were unlucky enough to cross his path at a time and place of his choosing. Doesn’t that mean the killer is weaving his own story? One he can’t escape from? It’s a story that makes sense from the killer’s point of view. A very dangerous story. Isn’t that the kind of story you wolves are supposed to be hunting?”
She shook her head so hard her ponytail flipped from side to side. “The killer’s living a story, but he’s not being influenced by a copy. As long as the story is his alone, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“You just don’t want to.”
She snorted dismissively. “You don’t know anything about us. We’re not concerned about whethe
r or not the police catch serial killers. It’s the stories these crimes generate afterward. We have to watch them very carefully to see if the stories take on a life of their own, or wither away with time, or get established as strong stories because people’s intelligence and common sense aren’t strong enough to resist them.”
She peered at him suddenly with narrowed eyes. “But I think you’re right. Whether there’s one killer or more than one, someone is being driven by desire.”
“You think? A psycho killer with psycho lust.”
“Those desires are Galla’s prey, not ours. If she felt like it, she could probably do a deal with the killer and put an end to the murders. I don’t know if that would be the right thing, though. Goodbye, Kotaro.” She waved a hand and set off down the path leading deeper into the park.
“Hey, do you know where you’re going?” Kotaro looked around quickly for a board with a map of the park. When he looked down the path again, she was already out of sight. How had she gotten away so fast?
“One more thing.”
Her voice was right behind him. He stood up so fast he nearly leapt into the air. “Don’t scare me like that!”
She was scarcely a yard away, arms folded. “Keep a careful eye on Mika. Her troubles aren’t over. This is no time to relax.”
“H-how do you know that?”
“Because her book is worried. I told you. Books have power. They have wisdom. They have hearts, too. Promise me!” She thrust a finger in his face. “Keep her safe!”
Kotaro was shaking with astonishment. He gave her a jerky nod. “Okay, okay.”
She turned and walked away, not hurrying, as though she had nothing on her mind at all.
4
Mind your business and don’t do anything reckless.
Kotaro decided to take Yuriko’s advice to heart. It seemed like the best thing to do given the situation.
With no resolution for the loose ends he was holding, all he could do was wait for the next development, just as Yuriko Morisaki, a beautiful young girl with a preachy attitude, showing up out of nowhere had been a development.