“Okay, then. Can you make it smell of osmanthus?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Very well. As I say, if I could ask you to wait just one more week, that would be much appreciated. Goodbye.” Mr. Tei bowed politely, then vanished.
In the days that followed, I continued to use the incense. I looked it up on the internet and discovered that just as Mr. Tei had suggested, it was a pretty standard product, so if it ever ran out, I could always buy a new box. The fact that it had been in my father’s room suggested that maybe he’d been using it to see my mother from time to time. It was endearing to think of him doing so every now and then, never once letting on to me about it.
In two days’ time, it’ll be a week since Mr. Tei’s visit.
A Fox’s Life
“If you were an animal, you’d definitely be a fox,” the young man next to Kuzuha piped up out of the blue.
Kuzuha’s eyes twinkled. “If, you say . . .”
Since she’d been a child, Kuzuha had been told she resembled a fox. There was something decidedly vulpine about her long, lithe body, not to mention her narrow eyes and slender face. She realized early on that “You look like a fox” wasn’t intended as a compliment. Ironically, the girls held up as “foxy” at school were actually those who looked nothing like foxes.
In her twenties, when Kuzuha was working in an office, the nation was rocked by the Glico-Morinaga scandal, an extortion case that targeted several major confectionary companies through blackmail campaigns and kidnapping. The only known suspect from the mystery group calling itself “The Monster with 21 Faces” was identified in the papers as “the fox-eyed man.” As his antics wreaked havoc on Japanese society, Kuzuha cursed him internally for giving foxes an even worse reputation than they already had. With their round eyes and tubby bodies, Kuzuha’s parents were built more after the model of another shape-shifting animal, the tanuki, and Kuzuha’s sister, older than her by five years, had been born one too. Kuzuha grew up as a lone fox surrounded by cuddly raccoon dogs.
The fox was good at school. From the very beginning, there wasn’t a single subject that she struggled with. She excelled at sports, too.
Whenever she approached a problem, Kuzuha spotted a shortcut. These shortcuts were always immaculately paved, without even the tiniest of pebbles littering the surface; the arrow-straight path they traced to the answer was well lit. All Kuzuha had to do was waltz her way there. When her classmates complained of finding their schoolwork hard, Kuzuha simply couldn’t understand what that was like.
Yet for all her mental agility, Kuzuha was incapable of sitting back and enjoying her cleverness. Each time she performed well in a test and the results list stuck up in the classroom showed her name above all the boys’, she felt everybody’s eyes on her. Outshining the boys only made other people uncomfortable, and consequently, Kuzuha was troubled by a creeping feeling that something bad was going to happen to her. Sometimes she loathed that pebble-free, arrow-straight path. If only it had a few weeds, the odd twist and turn—something, Kuzuha thought. Then she could trip and fall in a cute, comical way, and other people would look and laugh, and she’d be able to laugh along with them. That was a more suitable way for a girl to be. Kuzuha loathed standing out. She couldn’t see a single benefit to it. People resented girls and women who stood out, both in her class and in the world outside it. That was how it seemed to Kuzuha.
Kuzuha could see shortcuts, which meant she could also see what was to come. She knew that however hard she tried, the path ahead would always be blocked to her at some point. History proved it, society proved it, and various statistics proved it. As long as it was just her and her textbook, she could play with her shortcuts, but eventually Kuzuha’s route would be sealed off entirely. She would have no hope of winning.
And if Kuzuha had to start out all over again when she came up against the blockage, she would have to take a very long way around indeed. Could anybody really blame Kuzuha for concluding that the most expedient shortcut was not to make any effort at all? That it was, in fact, wiser not to dream big and to become, instead, a person who didn’t offend anyone? When the time came for Kuzuha’s classmates to decide on their future plans, Kuzuha announced with the utmost composure that she was going to look for a job straight out of school. The teachers practically leaped from their chairs in shock. Uproar engulfed the staffroom.
In the Career Advice Room, and during several visits to Kuzuha’s home, her teachers attempted time and time again to persuade Kuzuha and her parents that she would be better off continuing her education. “We are entering an age where women, too, will be attending university,” the teachers prophesied, “and your daughter really is exceptionally gifted.”
One time, the deputy head himself came out to speak with them. Kuzuha was astonished that she had elicited such a violent reaction from her teachers. Even her parents, who didn’t oppose Kuzuha going to university but had intended to leave the decision up to her, seemed so stirred by the fuss being made that they began suggesting to their daughter that perhaps she really should go after all. But Kuzuha refused to listen. In the end, the lengthy discussions ended with her teachers and her parents all making the same vacuous statement:
“Well, I guess she is a girl, after all.”
Yes, thought Kuzuha, you’ve got that right.
