sinnesspiel | Shiki Novel Translations 3.19.2

Seishin was thinking when a small voice said ‘excuse me’ from the koshiyose. While wondering if it was just his imagination, coming out of the office, there stood a girl of fifteen or sixteen in the koshiyose ground. Seishin did not know who the girl was.

“Who might you be?” he asked but the girl kept her mouth sealed and hung her head. “Is something the matter?” he asked again, when the girl raised her face at last.

“Uhm, ….I,” she tried to say but lost her nerve and again hung her head. “The Junior Monk likely does not remember this, but we’ve met before, at Megumi’s funeral….”

“Shimizu-san?”

Yes, the girl nodded. Last summer, there had been too many funerals to count, and he’d met more people involved with them than his memory could hold. Seishin thought the girl’s face had indeed seemed familiar but amongst the vast thrond of faces he had seen, who one was and where he’d met them he could not determine.

“Anyway, come inside. I’m sure it’s cold there.”

A cold wind blew. The girl showed hesitation, but then nodded and took off her shoes. Seishin lead the girl to the office and turned up the heater’s strength. To the girl who continued to keep her eyes downcast, he heated and offered tea. “I’m sorry that it isn’t much. But please do warm yourself with it.”

“Thank you very much,” the young girl’s voice said sounding as if it would fade out.

“You are Shimizu Megumi’s friend?”

“Yes. …. I, childhood friends….”

That daunted, hesitant locution, he thought he remembered from somewhere. Come to think of it, during Megumi’s burial, hadn’t there been a girl who had said in the same manner that she had wanted to leave a present in her grave?

“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but might you be the one who had gone back to get a present during Megumi-chan’s burial?”

The girl with her hands around the teacup looked up. At last her expression softened. “That is right. Uhm… I am Tanaka Kaori.”

The young girl breathed out as if with relief. “I came with a request. That is… in order to receive a Kaimyou, what steps must I take?”

“Did misfortune come to someone you know?”

The girl hung her head. Uncertain, her mouth opened, than closed. “So is it true that if I am not a parishioner, I can’t….?”

“No, it isn’t that you need to have been a long term parishioner. But if there is another temple which you are affiliated with, I do think it would be best to ask them. Has someone you know passed away?”

“My mother. …..But, that isn’t it. I want a kaimyou for myself.”

Seishin startled. “Yours?”

“So that I may die at any time. Is that impossible?”

The girl raised her face and looked at Seishin with a serious expression. She showed a painfully earnest face. Seishin sat down next to the girl.

“It isn’t impossible. There are those who even receive their kaimyou before they are born after all. But, for one as young as yourself, this is the first time someone has come to ask such a thing. How old are you, Tanaka-san?”

“……Fifteen.”

“That is not an age where one would say that they could die at any time,” he said softly, to which the girl hung her head. “But for you to say so, you must have your own reasons, and so as far as the process of assigning a kaimyou, it is not a problem to do so. However, for a young one such as yourself to be seemingly preparing for death, it is painful to see. ---You had said you’ve lost your mother?”

“……Yes.”

“How is the rest of your family?”

“My father has died also. My little brother has died also. I no longer have family. Right now, a neighbor is looking after me.”

“You have my deepest condolences. That is indeed most painful, I’m certain.”

“I’m next. I know and have accepted it, so I want to do it right.” Kaori lifted her face and showed her mud covered hands. “I dug my burial hole before I came here. I’ve prepared my grave. It isn’t anything special, but I looked at my Dad’s and Mom’s and wrote my own like theirs. I thought it’d be good to leave it so that all they have to do is write in the day I die. Any more than that would be a burden to the older woman caring for me. But when I looked, I saw graves had kaimyou, and since I didn’t know how to give myself a kaimyou, here I am.”

Seishin saw the paleness in the girl’s face. This young girl was trying to hurry herself. Having lost her family, the only one left alive, she had lost her will to live and was seeking to bury herself together with them. He could only see the act of preparing her own grave as a ritual to separate from herself.

“Your life is much more precious than you think.” At Seishin’s words, Kaori tilted her head in confusion. “Having lost your family must indeed be painful. To have lost both parents at fifteen, you must be wondering what will become of you from now and cannot come to an answer. I think that you, Kaori-san, feel that you are living with no direction. With nothing you could feel hopeful towards, you expect nothing but suffering. For all of that, you must feel no value in living, and if living has lost value, then you may also feel that life in itself no longer has value. However, there is no such thing as a life which does not have value.”

“I….”

“Kaori-san’s life is the one sacred thing bestowed upon you. People all must die. Neither can I say to you that that is something far in the future. It’s very sad, for humans not to know when they may die, and you and I alike may not have much longer to live. In this village, lately, human life spans are short. People die too soon. Life is so very fragile. “

“……Yes.”

“But, knowing that tomorrow you may be dead is a separate matter from deciding you can die at any time. To know that tomorrow you may be dead is to understand and accept the fragility of life. To decide you can die at any time is to despair over life’s fragility and to cast it out. However, however fleeting, there is no life so worthless that it can be abandoned without a second thought,” Seishin said with a strained smile. This wasn’t a line that should be said by one who had approved of the village’s demise. He couldn’t not mock himself for that. “……I’m sorry that this is all I can say. As for me, I cannot understand the situation which Kaori-san is now in. I cannot know how hard it has been, how hard it is even now. For one such as myself to act all knowing, I can only imagine that Kaori-san must only be wondering what I think I’m talking about. ……With that said, this is only me voicing my own thoughts, but the fact that you at the tender age of fifteen are preparing your own grave tells me how much pain you are in. If you are in need of a Kaimyou, I will prepare and give you one, but it it saddens me that this is the only role I may fill, and it is a great shame.”

“But…… I,” Kaori hung her head. “Next is me. And it’s going to be soon. After all…… Megumi’s mad at me.”

“Shimizu-san, however, was Kaori-san’s friend, I had thought?”

“That’s right. That’s why she’s so mad, I think. Dad too, and Mom too, and Akira too, that’s why…” Kaori’s two hands clutched tightly together. “Next, it has to be me.”

Kaori looked at Seishin. Seishin’s head remained slightly tilted, at a loss for words. Kaori took Seishin’s silence as an urge to continue. It didn’t seem as if he was either troubled for how to respond, nor taken aback by what she said, but rather that he was waiting on what she would say next.

“I don’t know, I, what Megumi’s thinking. But it’s clear she’s mad. Because Dad and Mom have died. Akira—my liffle brother too.”

“If Megumi-san is angry, Kaori-san’s family will pass? Why?”

“I don’t know. But, Megumi is,” Kaori started to say, when her mouth closed. Even if she told, the adults would not believe her. Even now it was certain that he thought she was very strange. Thinking that, she looked to Seishin and yet Seishin only remained with his head tilted, waiting for her words. “I think that the Junior Monk will laugh. I don’t think you’ll ever believe me. But, Megumi---Megumi said so. Your dad’s dead, she said. And then my dad really had died, and the same for Mom and Akira died too.”

“Shimizu Megumi-chan predicted it?”

“She didn’t predict it, she announced it. Your father’s dead, she said. And then when I looked he really was dead. Megumi’s doing this to get revenge on me. She said ‘serves you right’ and everything. I don’t know why but, still, I’m sure it’s since Yuuki-san died.”

“Yuuki—Natsuno-kun?”

“That’s right. Megumi was in love with Yuuki-san. But I, I knew Yuuki-san was in danger, but just knowing it wasn’t enough to save him. Maybe that’s why she’s mad. Maybe because I got him caught up in something dangerous. I don’t know why, but anyway, Megumi is,” Kaori started to say, when she realized she may have said too much. “Megumi is, she’s changed.”

Is that so, Seishin said. He didn’t laugh, nor make a face, giving a serious nod. “And that’s why Kaori-san believes she is next.”

“That’s right.”

“Megumi-chan rose up, and this time she will get revenge on you directly.”

“That’s it,” Kaori nodded. “You may not believe me, but that’s what I think. ……No, whether it’s really Megumi or not, I don’t know. But I am next. That I’m sure of. Because I’ve noticed. Yuuki-san and Akira, they died because of that after all.”

“Natsuno-kun died because of that.”

“He did.”

Seishin’s brow furrowed slightly.

“You probably don’t believe me, but it’s true. I,”

“No, that isn’t it. I was thinking, what a shame it is.”

Kaori tilted her head.

“He realized it. And you and your little brother did too. Even though had I known, I could have helped.”

Kaori sat mouth agape.

“I’m sure there were others. And they were handled. There must have been a lot of people like that, that we didn’t know about. And yet, I couldn’t do anything….”

Yuuki Natsuno’s death was confirmed to be retaliation by the Shiki. Realizing what wasn’t allowed to be realized, Natsuno was handled. And that itself was done by an attack by someone he knew, an act cruel to both the victim and the perpetrator.

And, Kaori’s misfortunes may have been the same. That young girl knew what must not be known, and so she lost her father and her little brother. Awash with pity, Seishin looked at the girl left isolated, and realized it was not only Kaori who had been isolated.

Seimei had absconded, Sumi had died, Ikebe, Tsurumi. The number of people about the temple had again decreased. That they had avoided a complete disaster as was happening to kaori’s house was no doubt because owned wholly to the fact that this was a temple, a most loathesome place to Shiki. If that weren’t the case then right now Seishin may have been the only one left, and maybe even Seishin himself would no longer be here.

Seishin had to somewhat hold himself back from tears. Shinmei was not alive. As for why, it was retaliation. It was regulation against Seishin who knew too much.

(Sunako……Do you have to go this far?)

Seishin murmured in his heart but strangely he was not angry. In the place anger would be instead there was something akin to pity towards Sunako. When he thought as to why he felt that way, it was because he couldn’t help but think Sunako herself did not approve of the lengths she was going to.

Toshio’s words echoed in his ears. Probably, following this line of reasoning would lead to Sunako. If it didn’t, she wouldn’t be so taken with the feeling of “being abandoned by God.” Those who knew too much had to be handled. This was inevitable for Sunako to preserve her own existence. But Sunako likely mourned herself having to handle them.

Seishin derided himself for thinking that.

(This is how… I’ll escape….)

Hating Sunako at this point would be the obvious conclusion. She killed his father. And that was because Seishin knew too much, all for that. Those who realized the Shiki’s crimes had to be regulated. And not just against the person, but by attacking their family. This act only added to their crimes, and so accepting the Shiki as an abhorrent existence was no doubt the logical end.

The Shiki were mass murderers. Seishin was a victim whose father was attacked, and so he had to hurl the verbal stones at them. Like his neighbors had to do to he who murdered his little brother.

(His sin was exposed…)

He was drug out during the judgment. The neighbors disdained and shouted at him.

But nobody lamented for him having committed the sin.

How driven out into the wilderness, he suddenly thought something. Amongst the community who had attacked him on his brother’s behalf, there were none who lamented that he had committed the sin.

No, if one considered that he was a sinner, maybe that was only natural for him to sin. But at the same time, now away from the hill, gazing back upon it from the wasteland looking back, why that was taken for granted was not something he could find the basis for.

To him, the entire affair of his little brother’s mortal wound was nothing short of a tragedy. His little brother was not his true target. Having lost his little brother, the one most hurt, with the most to lose, with the most lost, was he himself. Making others understand that was difficult. In truth, whether it be towards the Sage or towards God, those true feelings of his would never be spoken. Because to the villagers, he was clearly a sinner, and by jealousy, or perhaps animosity slaughtered his brother as a slaughtering murderer does, and was a coward who sought to hide that sin, a rebel who disdained God for how composed he was in coming up that hill. ---But all the same, why, with that decided, did he have to be the subject of such scorn?

That wasn’t to say it wasn’t a sin worthy of scorn. He only found it strange. The villagers he knew were rich in love, believed in the light of God, were pious and altruistic. He who was alone in the green fields they reached out their hands towards, and he declined for fear of disrupting the order of things, found them to be painfully virtuous people. At the very least, that was how he had seen them.

In that case, why, he he was ultimately driven out of the harmony known as the order, did none of the villagers reach a hand out towards him? His poverty that had him jealous of his little brother, such jealousy that he committed such a sin, why did they not lament that? His foolishness at trying to hide his sin, his ignorance to disdain God, all of that should have been appropriate for the villagers to mourn.

And at the same time he was angry at that. They shouted at him and cast stones. Why were they angry, why were they abusive, why did they throw stones and further judge the sinner? Because he was an enemy to the order. He as a sinner trampled their order underfoot.

In other words the villagers, while having mercy abounds for those who cooperated in the same order had none to spare for its enemies, isn’t that what it meant? The villagers hated people, blamed, and cursed them. They also had in them the potential to be merciless, but it was simply not directed at their comrades. Yet at the same time, could those who were so discriminatory, who could wield compassion and heartlessness so selectively, really be called virtuous, and could the truly good natured do such a thing?

Were they truly without sin? He doubted that for the first time.

He looked back upon the hill. The hill was in the middle of a great wasteland, small and obstinately closed off. It was not that the hill was surrounded by the wasteland, he confirmed. It was that the wasteland had a hill in it. By rejecting outside world and banishing that which they seemed sinful into the wilderness, it was a painstakingly maintained paradise.

Shiki Novel Translations 3.19.2

Wow thank you so much!