Suzume, page 11
“Hey, Souta! Can I come in?”
“Argh!”
“I can hear you in there!”
Bang, bang! I glance at Souta for salvation, but he just says, “He’s not a bad guy,” and leans against the wall. Bang, bang!
What do I do?!
The door clicks open. The man standing at the entrance has a mullet bleached almost blond and a red satin shirt unbuttoned at the chest, like a gangster.
“Um, hi,” I say, bowing pertly.
“Whoa!” Serizawa looks at me in shock. I’ll have to think on my feet. “Who are you?!”
“Um, Souta’s little sister!”
“He has a little sister?”
“Um, I’m his…cousin who’s just like a sister!”
“Seriously?”
He narrows his cold eyes behind a fashionable pair of round glasses. Eek!
“Um, you’re Serizawa, right?”
“You know my name?”
“Souta has mentioned you.”
The dagger-like glare behind his glasses softens considerably.
“A teaching certification test?” I say, echoing Serizawa’s words. I’m having a hard time believing them.
He’s standing in front of the bookcase, his back to me.
“Yeah,” he continues grumpily. “Yesterday was the second round, but he didn’t show up. That’s not like him.”
“The test was yesterday? Really?!”
I glance at Souta standing against the wall. He won’t look me in the eye. He sits there, soaking up the afternoon sun and maintaining his act.
“What an idiot. Four years of work, up in flames.”
Serizawa sounds exasperated. He’s looking at the rows of reference books on the shelf. Acing Your Teacher Employment Exam, So You Want to Be a Teacher, Real Questions from Tokyo Teacher Exams, Mastering the Elementary Subjects with Ease. Sandwiched between the faded spines of used books, these titles stand out, bright and new.
“I was so worried when he didn’t show up, I couldn’t focus on my own test.”
He sweeps his long locks irritably off his forehead and glares over his shoulder at me.
“What did you say your name was? Suzume?”
I shrink back. He’s got a really nasty stare.
“Tell Souta never to show his ugly mug around me again. He’s really pissed me off.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, wait…,” he says, glancing away like he’s just remembered something. “I lent him twenty thousand yen,” he mumbles, then glares at me again. “Tell him to return it, pronto.”
“Huh…?”
“He said his family business was in trouble,” Serizawa mutters, sticking his thumbs in the pockets of his black skinny jeans and walking toward the door. “That guy needs to learn to take care of himself… Dammit… Can’t even text when he’s in trouble? What is he, a kid? I swear, no common sense…”
Serizawa is putting his shoes back on like he’s done here, and done with me. I trot over to the entryway. He pulls on his pointy-toed shoes and opens the door.
“Later,” he says with a cursory glance at my flustered face.
He walks out the door. Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzes.
“Shit!” he says and stops walking. His phone is buzzing, too, with that dissonant sound. He takes his phone out of his pants pocket and looks at the screen.
“An earthquake warning. Wonder if we’ll feel it.”
I put my shoes on silently and slip past him out of the room. He says something I can’t hear, but I don’t have time to answer. I lean over the railing in the common hallway and look out at the city.
“It stopped,” he says. Our phones are silent. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, peering into my face.
“…It’s close,” I blurt out, ignoring his question. Much closer than I expected. Beyond the rows of houses and multiuse buildings, maybe two or three hundred meters away, a reddish-black column rises. Writhing slowly in the gaps of sky between buildings, that muddy river is like an enormous, meaningless sculpture hurled into the middle of the urban space. Flocks of crows circle the worm, cawing.
“Shit, that’s a lot of birds!” Serizawa says next to me. “They’re near the Kanda River. I wonder if something’s in the water.”
He can’t see—not the part that matters. I notice a clattering sound.
“Let’s go,” Souta whispers sharply, suddenly at my feet. I lift him up and take off running.
“Hey, wait, where are you going?!” Serizawa shouts after me. I don’t look back. As I race down the apartment stairs, I think, A teacher certification exam? But—
But Souta didn’t say a word to me about anything like that.
If the Plug Was Pulled from the Sky
“I didn’t know you were supposed to take a test!” I say as we run through the neighborhood under the setting sun. “It was yesterday! What are you going to do?!”
“It’s not your fault.”
“But…I’m the one who pulled the Keystone out of the ground!”
The students we pass stare at me, the weird girl shouting to herself and carrying a kiddie chair.
“It’s fine,” Souta says, like the matter is settled. “We’ll put an end to all of this today. We’ll close the Gate, turn the cat back into a Keystone, and finally get me back to my old self!”
I’m running down a hill next to a high school. At the end of this road is a wide street, and beyond that, I can see the muddy red river, which is squirming violently. When I reach the bottom of the hill, I turn the corner onto the sidewalk.
I weave through the swelling crowd of people on their way home from work and school, keeping an eye on the worm as I run. It’s to my right, only a few dozen meters away, across a four-lane road full of traffic. The red column is swaying parallel to the road—crawling through the air over a sunken river on the far side of the traffic. People watch uneasily as hundreds of crows swoop and soar above.
“So the Gate must be—,” I say as I run.
“—Ahead of us, farther down the Kanda River!” Souta answers from my arms.
Trees block my view, and I still can’t make out where the worm originated from. We’re approaching Ochanomizu Station, and the crowd of commuters is growing. I bump into people who swear at me and glower suspiciously at the chair in my arms, but I keep running. We have to reach the base of the worm, and fast. That’s where the Gate should be. And Daijin, too—
Then all of a sudden, something feels off.
“How cute!” I hear someone passing me say.
People are glancing at my feet.
“Oh, a cat!” someone else says. I look down.
“Suuuzume!”
“Daijin!”
The white kitten is running alongside me. It looks up at me and says happily in its childish voice, “Let’s play!”
“Keystone!” Souta barks, leaping out of my arms. He rolls a few times and dashes forward, while Daijin runs off. The kitten and the chair thread their way through a dense throng of legs. People are shouting about the inanimate object running through the station, taking pictures and videos with their phones. I push frantically through the crowd, trying not to lose the two of them.
“Aaah!”
Daijin dashes into traffic, and Souta follows. Cars honk, and camera shutters click. They’re darting around in four lanes of traffic like it’s a playground. Daijin crosses the centerline and slips under an oncoming truck, while Souta skirts the side. The next car is bearing down on them in an instant.
Just before it hits Daijin, the cat leaps nimbly onto its hood. Souta jumps up after it and noisily clambers over the car’s roof. Daijin leaps off with Souta close behind, and they both fly up onto an arch-shaped bridge overhead.
“Souta!” I scream. I glimpse the two of them disappear beyond the bridge’s railing.
“Did you see that?”
“You mean the cat and dog?”
“I think it was a chair!”
I push past frenzied onlookers and make it to the base of the bridge. There’s a staircase on my left. I run up it. My shoulder bangs into an elderly woman carrying a parasol, but I’m too out of breath to apologize properly. I’m so sorry! I say desperately in my head. At last, I reach the top of the stairs and step onto the bridge. More people are holding up their phones to take pictures, and I trace their line of sight.
Smack in the middle of the traffic on the bridge is Souta. He’s pinning the little white cat under his seat while the two of them seem to be arguing. The people taking pictures are bewildered. Drivers are honking in surprise as they swerve around the strange objects on the road. I stand rooted to the ground.
“What do I do…?”
I see a car plow toward them at full speed. It’s gonna hit them! I think, but the next instant, they both leap away. The car drives off, brakes squealing and horn honking. Souta is on the far side of the road, in the pedestrian lane. Without thinking, I start running.
“Ah!”
A car passes in front of my eyes, horn blaring. My heart pounds as I look left, then right, hold my breath, and sprint across the lanes.
“Souta!”
Finally, I’m next to him. Daijin is nowhere to be seen. Souta is standing on the railing, staring down. I follow his gaze—and gasp.
Below us is the Kanda River and, on its bank, the gaping mouth of a train tunnel. The reddish-black torrent is erupting from the tunnel, tangled in a mess of dimly glowing threads. It’s causing an eerie vibration in the air and spewing that disgusting sweet smell.
“Is the door back in there…?”
Suddenly, a train bursts through the foul current. Its silver frame emerges from the tunnel as if nothing is amiss, passes through the worm’s body, and enters the tunnel on the opposite bank.
“How can we get to a place like that?” I whisper in despair.
The worm extends below the bridge we’re standing on and stretches upriver. I look behind me, following its length.
The worm’s head is raised like a snake ready to strike.
Its long, glowing body stretches along the riverbank, and at its end, the head is lifting slowly into the sky as if invisible fingers are plucking it off the ground. A flock of crows ascends alongside it. Against the evening sun, the disgusting red column glitters with a bizarre beauty. Almost like someone is blowing a long breath into melted glass.
“…Huh?”
Suddenly, the worm stops rising. It is frozen, its height almost even with the high-rises lining both banks of the river, as if it has paused to think. Across the surface of its body, the muddy river silently swirls.
“Did it…stop?”
“…No,” Souta answers. His voice is shaking. I glance at him. He’s staring at the ground.
“…?”
I look down, too. The earth below is paved in hefty stone slabs.
“—!”
Something brushes against the soles of my feet, and I reflexively lift my heels. Is the ground rumbling? Below my feet, something big—too big to fit within my field of vision—is groaning. A chill crawls slowly up from my feet; I’m covered in cold sweat. I realize the birds and locusts are silent. The only sound breaking the silence is the crisp, clear rattling of some carefree train that missed the memo.
“…It’s too late,” Souta whispers bitterly. As I glance at him—
Boom!
The ground buckles under me. The force of it jolts me several centimeters into the air. I lose my balance and fall to my knees. The streetlights on the bridge swing like pendulums, clanging loudly. My phone buzzes, and that dissonant sound is followed by a robotic voice repeating, “This is an earthquake.” All around me, people’s phones are buzzing. Screams and panic spread. I pull out my phone and look at the screen. Yellow and red characters say, “Earthquake Early Warning. Inland Kanto region. Please be prepared for strong tremors.”
“—!”
My body goes stiff. But a second later, the alert disappears and the buzzing stops. Other people’s phones go quiet, too, and the panic subsides. The ground isn’t shaking anymore.
“It stopped… What’s going on?!”
There was only one vertical jolt. The worm is still. I look at Souta. To me, the chair’s face looks deathly pale.
“…It’s out,” he says.
“What is?”
“The second Keystone!”
I want to ask what’s happening, but the words stick in my throat. A gurgling sound is echoing from the tunnel. I whip my head in its direction. The base of the worm protruding from the tunnel is swelling—like the worm is a big hose and someone has stepped on the end of it. Its surface jiggles as the lump forms and grows.
“The whole thing is coming out!”
In unison with Souta’s heartrending yell, the lump bursts. The muddy torrent rushes out of the tunnel with overwhelming force, and as a tremendous rumble shakes the earth, the worm’s tail comes free. Its enormous snakelike form disappears under the bridge. As a strong wind swirls up and beats against my skin, I spot a white cat riding the torrent.
“Daijin!” I shout.
“…I will stop this massive earthquake no matter what, Suzume,” Souta says in a low voice, his eyes on the cat.
“Huh?”
“I’ll be back.”
He plummets from the railing to the ground.
“What?! Souta, no!” I scream. I lean over the bridge, intending to follow him. The chair is being swept under the bridge in that awful river. I glance reflexively over my shoulder and then start running in the same direction as the worm.
I dive into the flow of traffic. The screeching of brakes enters my right ear while and the honking of horns enters my left, and I pick up the pace. Someone slams on their brakes to my right and nearly skims my back. I’m on the other side now, sprinting across the pedestrian lane and onto the railing. Everyone around me is yelling. Right in front of me, the worm curves sharply upward. The other people here can only see me standing on the railing squinting at the sky. But I see something else.
“Souta, wait!” I leap off the bridge. People scream.
“Suzume?!”
Souta, tangled in the rising worm, reaches out a leg in surprise. I barely manage to grab it, and that instant, my body accelerates all at once into the air. My feet sway helplessly. My left loafer falls off and tumbles to the ground. I grip the chair’s leg with my right hand and desperately dig the fingers of my left into the surface of the worm. It feels like lukewarm grains of cooked rice, and they’re forming a crushed, sticky mess in my frantic grip. Riding the worm, I burst upward through the flock of crows and struggle to lift my body against the force of the wind.
“You—,” Souta yells angrily when I finally manage to squat beside him. “You’re crazy!”
“I couldn’t let you go alo— Ahhh!”
The grainy surface of the worm is melting away like cheese.
“Suzume!”
Souta’s voice fades away above me. I’m falling through empty space. The world spins, and my throat releases a silent scream. I can see a branch of the worm pushing toward me. As it overtakes me, I reach out my hand—but it slips through my fingers like watery porridge.
I’m falling, and the world is spinning. Clusters of buildings reflecting the evening sun flicker across my field of vision again and again.
“Suzume, I’m coming to save you!”
A voice drawing nearer, but I can’t see its owner.
“Sou—”
Something smacks into my stomach, cutting off my words. It’s the chair. Souta has jumped toward me and is pushing me.
“!”
Hugging him, I land on something sticky, roll a few times, and finally come to a stop.
“Are you okay, Suzume?”
“Souta!”
Still hugging him, I sit up. We’re on top of something that feels like springy ice. The worm’s body had felt like a torrent of jelly before, but it’s firmer here. I can see bubbly particles flowing beneath the translucent surface, like a school of little fish under the ice.
“The surface of the worm is unstable. We should stay here,” Souta says against my chest.
“Okay!”
The worm is rising with us on it. When I look up, I can see the far end beginning to swirl slowly in the evening sky like an enormous whirlpool.
As the invisible worm spreads across the twilit Tokyo sky, people finished with school or work are embracing their freedom and going all over the city. The air is full of their voices and breath, the smell of dinner wafts from restaurants and homes, and colorful lights take the place of the setting sun. As twilight falls, the hustle and bustle swells, as if the city has been repainted in saturated colors.
Nobody notices.
They don’t notice the abnormal shimmer in front of the sinking red sun. They don’t notice the strange hint of a rainbow reflected on the shiny glass windows of skyscrapers, the windshields of cars stuck in traffic, the rims of glasses filled with mineral water, or the surface of the Imperial Palace’s moat as they jog past. They don’t notice the enormous swirling torrent reflected in the eyes of the birds as they gather on rooftops to stare at the sky.
They’re thinking excitedly about their date tonight. About a nice dinner for one. The conversation they’ll have with a friend. The smile of their son or daughter when they pick them up from school.
They’ve nearly forgotten the brief earthquake earlier in the evening. They’ve forgotten the girl who leaped from the bridge. The single loafer that for some reason fell out of the sky a short while later.
But the birds can see it, and so can we. That huge red whirlpool covering the heavens. The way it is sucked upward, like someone has pulled a plug at the top of the sky and the muddy red water is swirling out the drain. The way it grows instead of disappearing. The way it covers the sky like an enormous lid fit snugly over the metropolis.
I hug Souta and run across the top of the whirlpool.
“The worm is covering the sky!” I blurt out. I’m running over the top of it with Souta clasped to my chest. The surface feels like springy asphalt now, solidified into a translucent mass. I can make out a hazy horizon line and, below me, innumerable buildings. The branches of the worm spread over the whole city, each one curled in its own intricate whirlpool. From a distance, they look like countless, glittering red eyes staring blankly down at Tokyo.
