COURTING DEATH

Chapter 18 part 2

She holds out her hand. "Come."

I suddenly tire of being alone. Even the moan echoing from Yomi sounds better than the silence of my room. I rise and take her hand. It is solid, cool and strangely comforting. At least Yomi, while not exactly comforting, feels strangely familiar.

My eyes adjust to the dim atmosphere as we stroll along the bridge. I realize I am still holding her hand. I let go and watch it fall away. "How hard is it to become a shinigami?" I wonder aloud.

"Well, you do have to die."

"After that."

Shizuku continues for a few silent steps. "I don't remember, but most of the spirits I've known to become one, aren't happy about being dead."

It was just a thought, I think, though I don't know why it came to me.

We turn down another elevated walkway. "Where are you taking me?"

"Here."

We step through the portal onto a dim street corner somewhere in Japan. An old, rundown, wooden apartment building slouches in the shadow of a newer and more modern tower of apartments. I am not at all surprised when Shizuku walks straight toward the narrow two-story fire trap. She mounts the shaky stairs, walks up to the second apartment of four and steps straight through the door. I put my hand out, stopping myself before I smash into it.

A sound, like the distant cry of a small child, comes from within. I hesitate, before knocking with the back of my hand. It opens immediately.

Shizuku stands on the other side. Her question look seems to ask why I didn't follow her in. I return a sarcastic smile. "Why are we here?"

"If it were to exist," she steps aside, "what would you say is the strongest of all loves?"

I don't know why, but I'm feeling cynical. "Love of self?" I step through the door and I'm struck by the smell of mold, rotting garbage, vomit and every other form of human waste.

"If that were true, no one would ever hurt themselves. How often do you think that happens?"

"What is that stench?"

"Your final lesson." She gestures around a single room apartment. A small kitchen area in one corner holds a pile of dirty pans, dishes, tied plastic bags full of trash and mostly-empty containers from convenience stores and fast-food places. Snoring in the opposite corner, a pair of skinny unwashed bodies—a man and a woman—lay passed out on a dirty futon in the middle of the floor. An infant's crib cringes nearby, which explains the rancid diaper smell. "Care to guess again?"

The too familiar stench of failure depresses me. "I am tired of games and have no intention of playing." Suddenly I'm ready to be alone again. "Just say whatever you have to say."

"The love of a mother for her child, surely there can be no love greater. Such an investment of time, effort, wealth and pain—so much waiting promise..." She gives me a taunting smile.

I look back at the sleeping pair, the silent crib and the stench of decay weighing heavy on the air, and I wonder what new horror she has to show me as proof of love's failure.

"They are younger than they appear." She pauses to look at the sleepers. "A hard life and harder drugs have taken their toll. The pain of living has stolen from them everything but what they cling to most." Shizuku steps carefully through the debris, crossing the room to the crib. She bends and rises with a shape in her arms though its dark shadow remains behind in the crib still and breathless. She turns toward me holding the spirit of a young child. "That which they clung to was not this child."

I hear a faint cry echoing as if from a faraway infant. Though I hear no words, I understand its meaning. It cries for its mother, for her breast and the need to be held. A spasm of nausea challenges my will to stop it.

"His name was Yuuki. His mother loved him as much as any mother loved a child. She had hoped the boy would fill the emptiness in her soul." She pauses and looks down at the baby. "If only love existed, then perhaps it might have been sufficient and the child would not have starved to death from neglect."

The infant stares up at Shizuku with open eyes and mouth, its strange voiceless cries echo back from another world. A jagged hole tears open in the air. The ghostly cry grows louder, joined by the groans of Yomi's dead.

Shizuku glares at me indignantly. "Do you understand now?" She turns and steps through.

I follow. Now that I'm finally thinking about something other than my own despair, I remember the question that had been plaguing me. "You still say that love does not exist?"

"Is that not obvious?"

"Then why did you go out with Kurosawa? Why did you pretend to love him?"

"I never said I loved him. I never even said that I liked him."

"So what was all that?"

"An experiment."

"An experiment? What kind of experiment?"

"An experiment to see if there was any substance, no matter how slight, to this silly idea of love. It was also a way to get rid of the annoying attention of the other girls."

"So you were just pretending?"

"All love is pretense and the lover is the one most fooled."

I sigh. I'm not sure if I even care who is right or wrong anymore. All I know is that I still don't want to go back to school. I do, however, want this game to end. "So why haven't you been at school for the last few days?"

Shizuku remains silent for several steps. She turns onto a new walkway. "This pretense is tiring."

That she feels anything, surprises me and yet I almost feel I understand what she means. Whether real or not, love has certainly worn me out. "You have to come back to school."

"Why?"

"Everyone has heard that Kurosawa-san has broken up with you. They think you and I planned it. They're saying the fight is my fault."

"That doesn't make sense if Kurosawa-san is the one to have broken off the relationship."

"It's a long story. Apparently we had planned to drive him away. Depending on who you talk to, you were either toying with him or I was plotting to humiliate him."

"So why do you want me there?"

"So you can explain that I had nothing to do with it."

"And you think they will believe me?"

"I don't much care about the others, but I want Kyoko-chan to understand."

"Has she lost faith in you?"

"She is...uncertain."

Shizuku gives me a crooked smile. "And you call this love."

"It's your fault, letting yourself get attacked like that. Was that on purpose?"

A portal opens at the end of the walkway. My room waits nearby Shizuku steps aside holding the ghost baby. She looks down at it. "I was merely surprised. I had almost remembered what it was to think like a foolish mortal. In the end, I would have simply stepped away to where they could not reach me if you hadn't rushed in."

My embarrassment returns "I know. It was stupid. I wasn't thinking."

"And have you figured out what impulse caused you to do such a foolish thing?"

"Does foolishness need a reason?"

"Everything has a reason and the most inexplicable can often be the most enlightening."

I cross through the portal to my room, eager to end the conversation. When she doesn't follow, I look back at her. "Are you staying behind?"

She lifts her burden and shrugs. "I have something to take care of."

I nod. "See you at school then?"

"If you wish."

The portal snaps closed and I am again alone.