My Modern Kaidan: Meibatsu

Chapter 11

I race out of the house, but Miyako is already halfway down the block, walking swiftly. I manage to catch up to her and I begin to ball up my fists. I suddenly realize it takes everything I have to keep from hitting her right now.

"Miyako!" I mean to yell but my voice barely comes out in a whisper.

She stops walking and slowly turns toward me.

"Hello," she says softly. "Amaya-san."

The Miyako standing in front of me is much different from the Miyako from school, the girl I used to envy and Mikey used to drool over. Her porcelain skin now appears paper thin, exposing dark veins below her eyes and around the corners of her mouth, and her once lustrous raven black hair now hangs around her face in limp strands. But the most noticeable thing is Miyako's confidence, the confidence that made her a goddess at school, has been replaced with slumped shoulders that make her look half a foot shorter and a wavering gaze that can't hold mine.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

She hesitates before answering me. "I came to apologize. But when I saw you through the window, I couldn't."

"Apologize?" I say. "For your little vacation while the police were breathing down my family's necks? Well great job helping some psycho. I'm sure she was very persuasive."

"She was more than persuasive," Miyako says.

I blink, once, twice, emotion filled tears away that have found their way into the corners of my eyes. "What do you mean?"

Miyako seems to blink away tears of her own before speaking. "She was my aunt."

I squint my eyes at her. "What?"

"Mimiko," she says. "The woman from your garden. She was my aunt."

I laugh, like suddenly I'm the only one allowed to have a crazy aunt.

"On the night I went to your house, she caught me walking home from Kenji's house. She told me to get in her car, and then she kept driving."

"I don't understand," I murmur, even as pieces begin to fall into place in my mind. If Miyako was the woman in our yard's niece, that would make her Sachi's niece as well.

That would explain why I was so willing to believe she was Sachi's ghost moments ago and looking at her now, the resemblance is crystal clear. I remember my dad's nervous laughter, him rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly as she lavished her attention on him the night she showed up at our house to get Kenji's books signed. Whether he knew it or not, he was reacting to the reincarnation of his long, lost love.

"Mimiko made me feel guilty, she said I was up to no good and wanted an answer for why I was acting out this way. I told her I wasn't but she refused to accept my answer. As she badgered me in her car that night, I ended up admitting I was stressed from exams. She finally drove me to her house 'to rest,' she said. But she wouldn't let me go."

She stops suddenly as a single rain drop falls onto her forehead. We gaze upwards just as a downpour begins, pelting us with angry droplets of rain from a sky that was blue only moments before.

"Come on!" Miyako says to me, reaching into her pockets and unlocking a white Mitsubishi parked at the curb only feet away. We get inside and I instinctively click my seatbelt into place. A rush of panic washes over me and I jab at the button to free myself. To my relief, it clicks open.

I glance up to find Miyako watching me with a grim face that says everything.

"There had always been something wrong with my aunt for as long as I could remember. But she was still my aunt, and in Japan, you do what your family says."

"I know," I say quietly.

Miyako sighs. "My mother has been unwell lately. She feels like our family is cursed."

"Yeah, by my family," I say.

"No," Miyako says quickly. "Mimiko chose her own path long ago. She wasn't even close with our family. We hardly ever saw her unless she was in town to do business with the Iwatas."

"The Iwatas?" I say. "As in, Kenji's family?"

"Yes," Miyako says. "The spring that Kenji's family uses in their business technically belongs to us. Once my ojiisan passed away Mimiko became the sole proprietor, but she hated the Iwatas too. She believed Kenji's father had seduced Sachi when they were younger in order to allow his family to secure a business deal with my family to use the spring."

"The spring," I repeat as rain beats against the window. I suddenly get a sinking feeling, deep in the pit of my stomach.

"Miyako, can you drive safely in this weather?"

"Yes," she says. "I think so."

"Can I ride with you back to your house?"

"Okay," she says, with a nod that confirms she knows something's up. I grip the sides of the seats tensely as she starts the car, wondering if this is how my dad felt the day he took off on his bike after Auntie.

The short trip seems to take forever, every turn and street sign coming into view in slow motion, further extended out by my sense of impending dread.

At last, I can make out the shape of Kenji's house through the rain. I turn to Miyako. "Thank you," I tell her, then jump out of the barely stopped car and bolt towards the house. I bound up the steps, my shoes thumping loudly against the wood and swing the door open. "Kenji!" I yell into the empty room. A solitary cup of tea sits on the counter, still steaming hot and smelling of toasted ocha.

I immediately turn and run back down the steps. As I round the side of the house my shoes slip on the grass and I slide onto my knees, caking them in mud. Undeterred, I get up and keep running, down the slope, towards the little brick building that shrouds the spring.

Just past the tree line I can see the gate is open and I burst through the entryway to find Kenji inside, his back turned to me as he struggles to crank the pulley system for the buckets.

"Kenji!" I say. "You've got to get out of here!"

He cranes his neck to look at me. "Amaya, what are you doing here?"

"I came to make sure you were okay. Listen, it's storming outside, we've gotta go."

He nods. "Yes. I just need to get the bucket off the line. If I don't do it now, the water from the spring could snap the rope. I've almost got it."

I step closer, where just past the stone ledge Kenji is crouching on, dark water ripples out into a black abyss shrouded by rock, what must be the natural bedrock of the hillside. Lightning claps overhead, followed by an increasing downpour that makes it sound like the roof is being stomped on by a hundred pairs of feet.

Kenji's arms tremble as he strains to pull the bucket up from water that's begun to lap against the side of the cave.

"Kenji," I press.

"Got it!" he exclaims but his excitement is short lived by the ominous sound of rushing water.

The spring water suddenly shoots into the air, rushing forward in a wave that knocks both of us to our knees as it floods the small space. The bucket rockets into the air and Kenji desperately grabs for it, the rope wrapping around his right wrist.

The next sound is a cavernous sucking, like someone has unplugged a giant bathtub. The water recedes with magnet-like force, dragging the bucket, the rope, and Kenji down into the dark recesses of the cave.