Prisoner in the Orifice

Mitsuho Kawasaki

Prisoner in the Orifice

“I dreamed of roasting an earlobe with soy sauce. Perhaps the hardships stored prisoner up over the winter are transformed by the dawn of spring into a strange dream, teasing us with the warm days to come.

Today, I saw the cherry blossoms. I gazed back and forth between those flowers, which somehow seemed to hold a trace of human warmth, and my own palms, which never seem to gather a single new wrinkle. After a few sighs, I headed home.

If I squint and trace back my memories, I can still recall a few things from my childhood.It was my mother who painted camellias in the summer and wrote poems about cicadas in the winter.

When I asked her, ‘Why do you do things so out of season?’ she replied, ‘You should look at the flowers that are blooming now. Listen to the sounds you can hear now. Is it so bad to cherish them only after they are gone?’ I still remember those words.

I also remember her saying that a pair of pianos were climbing trees and chirping. She was talking about an old man next door.

Thinking back, everyone feels as if they are floating inside a dream. It makes me feel that even roasting an earlobe with soy sauce wouldn’t be strange at all.

Grandma, why did you leave this world without waking us? I can no longer vividly trace your face in my memory, but I know you were a woman whose smile was completely natural and unforced.

The box you so cheerfully prepared was finally opened after about two hundred years. In that interval, humanity has mechanized. Every part of the body is now made of replaceable components—we are, so to speak, artificial humans, and the soft skin we once longed for is nowhere to be found.

Those were chaotic times back then; people ignored their immediate lives, utterly infatuated with hopes for the future. Among the wealthy, it was popular to escape the present through cold sleep and seek a new life in such a future. Our family was no exception.

Even though my mother was awakened in such an era, she carried herself with dignity and sometimes amazed those around her. It happened when a single mechanical dog malfunctioned and rampaged in the square.

Mother was on her way home, having managed to procure enough food for the two of us. She would walk until her feet were completely worn out, traveling three days a week to the rural areas where mechanization hadn’t yet fully reached. As her daughter, it made my heart feel suffocated.Of course, I could help her on my days off, but even then, I could never hold a candle to her.

That was when it happened. I was in the square too.

Even if it was a malfunction, a rampaging mechanical dog was usually destined for disposal, so I secretly worried about its fate. The national extermination squad would arrive in no time.Even if it was a machine, once it had become attached to us, we flesh-and-blood humans couldn’t easily forget it. I imagine it was the same in your time, Grandma.

That dog belonged to a family living on a street corner. Whenever I passed that house, I would purposely call the dog over to pet it. I even gave it electric food sometimes. I remember how beautiful its blue eyes were.

Mother poured a whole tank of drinking water from her cart onto the mechanical dog. Water must have seeped into its body through the wounds inflicted by the citizens; its movements slowed, and finally, it fell completely stil.

The mechanical people, terrified of water, drew back in a rush and watched my mother and the dog. As for me, overwhelmed by my own cowardice, I chose to remain a bystander. No, at that moment, that was the correct choice.

In the square, where only a mechanical whirring echoed, Mother softly embraced the water-soaked mechanical dog, stroking it as if to calm it down.

‘This child is just tired,’ she said, lifting him up and quietly heading home.

Mother must have known I was there. I pushed the cart she had left behind and chased after her back.

The citizens jeered, crying out that God was still alive, but once the commotion settled, everyone quickly dispersed. I heard later that when the extermination squad finally arrived, the place was already deserted.

As I write this letter to you, Grandma, the mechanical dog—whose tail and limbs now move with great difficulty—clings to my side, acting as if he never wants to leave. His blue eyes have grown faded and cloudy, but none of that matters anymore.

Even in this kind of era, Mother possessed a serene heart that loved the harmony of birds and flowers.And she was a gentle mother who thought only of me.

‘Sakura, no matter what happens, you can never become a mechanical person, so you must learn to take care of yourself,’ she would say, teaching me cooking, sewing, fishing, farming, and even the formulation of medicine. I don’t know if the medicine Mother made actually had any scientific efficacy, but it was certain that illnesses were cured by it.

And I loved Mother’s warm hands. Their warmth couldn’t compete with the heat dissipated by machines, but just being enveloped by them gave me a sense of peace, as if I were dreaming.

Once, we traveled far to gaze at the flower that gave me my name. The mountain ridges were dyed in the color of young grass, and the stream poured in the awakening of the season. The flower, looking like blue paint blurred across the sky, seemed to live right in the middle of an hourglass. It mirrored our own situation—unable to live in either the past or the future—and I felt something akin to a profound sympathy, something far deeper than merely looking at a landscape.

‘A little bird is always a little bird, isn’t it?’ Mother said, though I didn’t quite understand her then.

‘Someday, I’ll wash your dentures for you, Mom.’

‘I don’t wear dentures yet, I’m not that old.’

‘I just want you to stay healthy forever.’

The warm sunlight shone on the river surface, which was draped in a membrane of flower petals, where a stone turtle occasionally poked its head out. The branches stretched in all directions, welcoming me. It was such a beautiful landscape that I felt I wanted to live by these flowers forever, but Mother said the air there was polluted. So, I burned the color deep into my mind so I would never forget it.

Grandma, why did you leave us without waking us?

The other day, something happened.

That morning, Mother said she had caught a cold and didn’t want to leave her room. Because nothing like this had ever happened before, I grew deeply worried. I carried porridge and cold medicine to her room, but when I saw her utterly exhausted face, I panicked so badly I felt as though my entire heart would be crushed, leaving only a single centimeter intact.

‘Mom, please eat this. I have medicine too. It’s the medicine you made, so I’m sure it will cure you right away.’

‘Thank you. But I would prefer the medicine you made, Sakura.’

‘But I’m not good at making it...’

‘It’s alright. Bring it quickly, you have to go to school.’

‘I’m far more worried about you than school, Mom.’

‘Sakura, studying is important. The people who strived with all their might are the ones who built today’s world. You mustn’t think, “We’re just two people inside a fish tank anyway.” I need you to set my mind at ease.’

And so, I headed to school. I truly, truly did not want to go.

Even during class and during breaks, we kept our communication line open. Hearing her breathing brought me relief; a single cough made my pulse leap with anxiety. The teachers seemed suspicious of my unusually restless demeanor, but for the most part, they kept lecturing.

As for Mother, she didn’t leave her room at all, seemingly absorbed entirely by her own physical suffering, and as expected, I couldn’t concentrate on the lesson.

When the afternoon classes began, Mother’s breathing grew even more labored. She is going to die like this—the thought consumed me. I wondered if it was because she took the medicine I had made, or because I wasn’t a dutiful daughter. My thoughts spun entirely around the terrifying notion of losing her.

My dearest mother. The only mother with whom I could share the warmth of skin. Even when she carried herself with dignity, her body was fragile, a beautiful mother whose white skin was almost translucent. She was such a gentle person.

Because she is that kind of mother, if a demon or a god were to blow a sudden breath upon her, she would surely lose her light in an instant. Gentle people are always the quickest to die. They vanish in a sudden breath.

‘Teacher, I want to go home. My mother is unwell.’

‘Can’t you just replace the faulty parts? Oh, that’s right, your family is from the race that fled. Are you going to flee from class over something like that?’

I was so grieved that I couldn’t utter another word. The teacher took one, two, three steps away from my desk, then suddenly spun around.

‘You are communicating with the outside! I knew something was unnatural. Cut the connection. Have you forgotten that external communication is forbidden during class? Cut it now!’

I refused.

‘Please, not that. I beg you, I’m worried about my mother. Please understand!’

‘I understand.’

After a beat where time stood still, the teacher said those words, grabbed my arm, and threw me into the signal-blocking room. The moment the teacher slammed the door shut, Mother’s voice was buried in a wave of static, and then cut off with a sharp snap.

I sank to the floor, stunned by its absolute coldness. As the tears that silently welled up began to melt my body, my thoughts, as always, were entirely of my mother. Sitting on that cold, dim floor, the only communication left available to me was to press my hands together and pray for her. Without a single thought for where my tears might fall.

Of course, there was no reply. Every time I rubbed my knees together, I took another step into a dark shadow, terrified that Mother might have died at that very moment.

We learned in class that humans are no longer beings that absolutely must die, that immortality is not a difficult story if one utilizes repairs and replacement parts. But in this modern world, we mother and daughter are nothing more than sub-humans, heading toward our end without anyone even needing to turn off our power.

When the school hours ended, the door was opened.Paying no heed to the words the teacher uttered, I slipped past and just kept running, moving my short legs as fast as they could go.

My house is number twenty-seven. The only house with a flower bed.

Because we are sub-humans, because we belong to the race that fled, we cannot use the high-speed transit system.Even as the unyielding ground thrust up against my knees, ill-suited for running, I sprinted with my back to the skyscrapers that seemed to loathe the setting sun.

Throwing off my shoes, I rushed straight up to Mother’s room. But she wasn’t there. Even though I searched the entire house like a prying relative, I could not find her back, her black hair, or even her thin, pale lips.

‘Mom! Where are you now?!’

When I called out, there was a response.”

“『I’m on my way back from the fields at Godan mountain right now.』

‘Why?! Is your cold cured?’

『Mother is always full of life. Besides, we’d be in trouble if we had nothing to eat.』

‘Don’t say that... I could have managed the food somehow. I just wanted you to rest, Mom.’

『Thank you. That kindness makes me happy.』

I knew the path she would take well, so I left the house immediately.Her gloves, worn thin so that her skin showed through in places, were stained with the colors of dirt and ash. Mother was dragging her frail legs, tottering as she pushed the cart.

The crescent moon dissolved the deep shadows bleeding into the hazy mountain range, and the freezing air began to stiffen our bodies. Taking over the cart from her, my hands beat a wide, heavy rhythm to disguise the shivering brought on by the cold. In my eyes, Mother’s flushed face, trembling against the chill despite wearing my jacket, was vividly reflected.

Mother said nothing. It must have been terribly painful for her.

‘Are you alright, Mom? We’re almost there.’

‘I’m sorry… for causing you trouble.’

As we exchanged those words, silence descended between us once more. Looking up, there was the white moon.Back then, I never imagined we would have to endure such loneliness! I truly believed that if we drifted into the future, only happy times would move the clock’s hands, and every single person would live joyfully!

We who fled back then were left behind in the pages of the chronicle, while the people who survived the chaos are now living in comfort within civilization. It is only natural. I understand that.

It must be because we tried to consume nothing but happiness, devouring it all for ourselves.

A dry clatter-clatter, a sound entirely unsuited for civilization, echoed through the deep valley, where there was only a darkness deep enough to put billions of light-years of stars to sleep.

‘I got scolded by the teacher today. They found out I was communicating.’

‘You had to go through a painful time because of me. I’m sorry, my dear.’

Clatter-clatter, went the cart. For a moment, the wind blew.

It was three in the morning when we arrived home. Shunning the streetlights and avoiding the light-flooded main avenues, we walked. My house is number twenty-seven.

Mother fell asleep, utterly abandoning any attempt to presentable. After washing away the accumulated grime, I leaned against a cushion.

‘If only… if only all of this were a dream.’

Rubbing my eyes, I began to drift back and forth between wakefulness and dreams. The sound of my own breathing, escaping one by one, grew terrifying, and I scrambled frantically to catch each breath.

‘Mom,’ I call, but my voice doesn’t reach her. It wasn’t that the universe was there, nor was it absolute darkness; I was simply tossed about by a vague anxiety, terror, and loneliness, sinking and floating within it. Being trapped right in the center made it agonizing to breathe.

Even if we flip the hourglass over, we are still bodies trapped in the narrow center. We shall never be released from this bondage.Waking up in the morning, I no longer want to do anything at all. The morning sun feels like pure torment. Everything is too much trouble.

Grandma. Goodbye. I bear a grudge against you.”

I visited number twenty-seven, the place where my daughter and granddaughter were said to have lived. There was no one there. Only a hollow ruin of electric lights.

I had stepped into their former home to search for some memento, something that might warm my chest.As I pulled open the front door, a dog came rushing toward me. It had clouded blue eyes.

“Your legs are bad, aren’t they? For that matter, your tail barely moves at all.”

A single glance around was enough to tell me that they had lived a life completely out of step with the era, never once benefiting from the blessings of civilization. It closely resembled the past, or rather, the era I had come from.

I opened the window and looked out. The encroaching trees and wild flora embraced some metallic object, glowing indistinctly. When the wind blew, the chirping of sparrows was carried from somewhere. I wondered if the wind had ever blown through this city before.My gaze fell upon the desk by the window.

Their commemorative photograph stood in its frame, facing me.With a swift brush of my finger, I cleared away the dust, revealing the faces of my grown granddaughter and my daughter, whose wrinkles had greatly multiplied.

“When I was about this age, I wasn’t nearly this wrinkled.”

I wiped it gently with my thumb.

It was quiet. Yet, the house retained an atmosphere as if the two of them were still living there. As if, if I searched some hidden corner, I might find them sitting with their legs tucked tightly, looking lonely. I, too, am bound by the past.

“Come here, boy. I’ll charge you up.”

The dog entered its hibernation. I will take him back with me, I thought.

The moment I entered my granddaughter’s room, my vision failed me. The curtains were drawn tightly, plunging it into darkness. As I flung them open, the incoming wind stirred up a great cloud of dust.

Opening the window, I caught sight of a small tree directly before my eyes. A tiny insect flew inside, hovered for a brief moment, and then flew away, as if realizing that nothing remained in this room.

My granddaughter’s cabinet was neatly organized, but just one drawer of the desk was left half-open. Tucked away inside, completely unsealed, was the letter addressed to me.I sat at the desk and took up a pen.

“To my beloved granddaughter, Sakura. Thank you for your letter. No, rather, I am so sorry for making you wait. I am currently at the house where you two lived—number twenty-seven. Surely, I will never forget this place.

I never imagined I would correspond with you across centuries. When you were little, I thought I might like to try it someday, but I never anticipated a form like this.

Reading the letter that emerged from your drawer filled me with shock. And it made me feel terribly lonely, too.Please, do not resent me.Please know that I did not emerge from the box before you did.My eyes opened probably about a hundred years after the time you lived. I suppose they buried me away again, thinking an old crone was of no use. Wanting you to know this is surely just my own selfishness.

After all, this letter can never reach you.There is no way to correct the lonely lifetimes you endured.Therefore, after I depart from this place, I will leave this written explanation behind, so that at least your souls might read my excuse.When I awoke, the blissful world we dreamed of together did not stretch before me.

Wondering where you two were, I asked Christopher, the man who rescued me, about your whereabouts.Christopher said, ‘Are there others besides you? Then I’ll try digging a bit further, so wait here.’ He dug further for me, but in the end, you were not found.We were supposed to have slept nestled close together. Even when Christopher’s plating began to peel away, you still couldn’t be found—there was no way we could have been at a distance where we couldn’t find each other.

‘You are not here.’

As that realization dawned, I fell into a terrible panic and deeply troubled Christopher.From then on, solely to find your whereabouts, I traveled through various lands.By the way, struggling for food was exactly the same even in this era.

But I was not lonely. Because everyone was together. When everyone is unhappy, the happiness of each individual shines all the brighter. But if you alone are unhappy, you are illuminated by the surrounding happiness, making your own shadow grow all the darker. You two were the latter.Inside the vehicle rushing through the desolation, I accepted a piece of meat Christopher handed to me. With my loose teeth, it took a very long time to finish eating it, but my joy far outweighed the struggle.

I even found myself falling in love with Christopher, entirely unbefitting of my age. I was so surprised to find out he was even more of an old man than I was.Iron fragments grew like wild weeds—I wonder if such an expression is fitting. Gazing at such a view from the carriage window, strangely enough, the color of young leaves I stepped on as a girl, the color of plum blossoms taking flight…such things floated into my mind, and I began to feel as though this world was truly my own world. I haven’t the faintest idea why, but I had somehow become quite cheerful.

But when the rust-colored sand, obstructing my view, began to pelt against the window, those fantasies of my childhood vanished.It was past dusk when we arrived at the settlement where the machine-people you spoke of manage to survive.

The machine-people were quiet. They softly watched over the affairs of us humans, offering gentle smiles.They told me something.

‘This settlement is surely the most prosperous on this planet. If it weren’t for the devotion of those women, everyone would have simply starved to death.’

For them, this era must be terribly difficult to live in. Day and night, they are consumed with collecting electricity and replacement parts; if they cannot find them, their lifespans are whittled away.Humanity is expanding its cultivated lands, gradually reclaiming a more human way of life.

The sun has begun to love nature once more. Even the little birds run, and the fish take flight. I even heard a story that a single drop of water fell upon the barren mountains, turning those peaks a deep green. Surely, gods and buddhas do exist, I thought. Just as you wrote.

After that, led by Christopher, I visited settlements near crumbling ruins, mines where resources had dried up, and the first city that must have once boasted immense prosperity… there are too many to list.

Along the way, I obtained information from a passing machine-person that you two had indeed lived, and I finally arrived here.Finding the commemorative photo enveloped me in the poignant emotion of finally being reunited.You two have changed quite a bit; you look far more weathered, yet full of a profound grace. But that is only natural, considering how many years have piled upon us since we parted.I wanted to live with you too. If the three of us were together, I wouldn’t have cared if the future we drifted into was unhappy or whatever else.

I realized it far too late.Because I love you both, I do not want to believe that you died hating me. Even now, the lingering scent of this room makes me weep. Even the dust in the corner is precious to me.This letter will never reach you, but I only hope you will know that I awoke later than you. Earlier I wrote that this was my era, but that was no good.

I was just putting on a brave face I am a pretender.I haven’t changed since I was a child. No matter how many years you accumulate, being alone is lonely.

Lonely.This journey was like chasing your scent all around, so I have absolutely no idea what I should do next. After I build a grave where the three of us can rest, what shall we do? Shall we go and try to catch the Milky Way?If you should ever read this letter, let me say one last thing.Even with clouded eyes, please, oh please, stay alive.”

With these fingers that have retraced such gentle memories, I wondered if I could turn the page to my next life. My nails are thick, and my joints are swollen.Regret alone crouches deep inside my nose. My feet, bound to the house of the dead, share the same sentiment—perhaps for that very reason.

Almost unconsciously, my fingertips scooped up the dust from the photograph frame and brought it to my lips. It was not bitter. Nor, of course, was it sweet.Before I knew it, I had sunk deep into sentimentality.

Whenever I daydream, it is always about the past; even when I dream, it is almost entirely nostalgia for the town of memories.Only once. Only once did I ever harbor hope for the future. I do not know what became of the humanity we left behind.

Nor do I know the reason they perished.A heavy thudthe dog rubbed its back against the pillar of the desk, the vibration traveling all the way to my fingertips. It began to move. Those moving fingertips gradually birthed vitality throughout my entire body, and my physical self began to melt.

I must not stop. I can still move.I turned over the hourglass my granddaughter loved. There, I could see the grains falling vigorously, yet slipping through a few at a time, as if hesitating.As if everything that ought to happen, every encounter, is predetermined, they pass through the orifice.

We are not prisoners in the orifice. There is no past, and no future. To live in this single present moment with all one’s heart—that is the sole will of this constriction.

Twisting my waist, I cast my gaze toward the back of the room, where the streaming light had formed a circular stage. Dancing upon that stage was, unmistakably, dust. Yet, I lacked the confidence to declare it was merely dust.

Whether I should call it affection or something else, I could sense that something was present there.

I quietly stretched out my hand.Within the light, my wrinkle laden hand and each individual glittering particle crossed paths.

“Surely, you are still here.”

Each time a speck of dust crossed my hand and was cast outside the light, another particle entered from the dark, seeking the illumination, as if every single bit of this was begging to commune with me. It resembled the play of a young girl, yet it was different—after wrapping the back of my hand within its palm, it pressed a kiss there and departed. Such was the warmth.

“I am sorry for making you wait.”

The curtain swayed. The wind blew in, whispering softly.

“Thank you. For waiting for me.”

When I stepped outside, the blue sky was illuminating the young leaves in the flower bed. Christopher, who had escorted me this far, had waited a long time, but he showed no sign of minding.

“With this, I have no more regrets.”

We drove along the bumpy road through the desolation. The rusty iron fragments may one day be cleared away, but that day will certainly not come during my lifetime. Perhaps it will not even be removed by human hands, but rather, the children of the young leaves I saw just now will cover everything alongside the earth.Someday, a girl will dance upon the grass.Enveloped within a mysterious dream.