Rinsing the shampoo out of my hair now, I wondered why my aunt had come along and denied me that kind of freedom. I was sick of hair, utterly sick. Going around thinking about it constantly was a damn hassle. If I smartened myself up, made my skin hairless and smooth, then I was sure to meet a wonderful new man. Why did my aunt have to come and pour cold water all over my lovely, optimistic thoughts?
As I waited for the conditioner to sink in, I inspected my arms one at a time, both hair-free as a result of that day’s treatment. You see, Auntie? See how good they look? As I stroked each arm in turn, I felt the tears run down my cheeks. I hurriedly turned the shower on my face to conceal them.
The thing was, my aunt was absolutely right, and I knew it. Being hairless didn’t get you anywhere. It didn’t change a single thing. What an idiot I’d been! All those stupid, selfish things he’d come out with, like how his feelings for the other woman had “grown.” Had he been gauging his feelings with a measuring tape or something? And what did I go and say in response? “Well, I guess these things happen.” What a weed! At the very least I should have gotten angry. If I’d just thought about it, I’d have seen that everything he was saying was a load of shit, but instead I just bore it as best I could. And why? Why? Had I been brain-washed or what?
One after another, the little boxes where my memories had been stored had their lids flipped open, and the memories came together to form a black, hazy mass.
I’m coming, the black mass told me, as it swelled larger and larger. I opened more boxes. I kept on opening them, but there were always more. Still more. I groped around blindly, feeling every last one. I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m on my way, the black mass kept telling me. Not many left to go now; I had nearly unearthed them all. I could hear the blackness clamoring, the blackness I knew to be the accumulation of all the sadness and rage and frustration and emptiness and idiocy I’d been storing up inside my body. Just three left to go, no, four, now three, two, and this, this is the last box right here. I’m coming, announced the mass, right underneath my skin, so close that its voice struck me right between the shoulders. I’m coming, and then the black force overtook me, propelling itself out of my body.
Feeling a strange sensation beneath my palms, I opened my eyes and looked down. My thighs were black. Through the steam on the surface of the mirror opposite me, I could make out something that looked like a black demon. I touched my face. It felt no different from the hair on my head. My limbs, my torso, every single part of my body was covered with hair, from head to toe. Glossy, pitch-black hair, not a single split end or damaged strand. There was no trace left of my perm, either.
Before I knew it, I was standing with my arms stretched out in front of me, staring at myself in rapture. To know that all along my body had contained hair this strong, this black, this magnificent was an amazing thing—I was an amazing thing!
Glancing around, I discovered that the women in the bathhouse were staring at me with a mixture of alarm and curiosity. And with good reason: it must have seemed to them like a hairy monster of unknown origin had materialized out of nowhere.
Uh-oh, I thought. I stood up quickly and ran to the door. The stool I’d been sitting on clattered onto its side behind me. In the changing room, as the women around me screamed and whimpered, I retrieved my bag from my locker as casually as I could. I left the bathhouse quietly and turned down a deserted shopping street, running as fast as my legs would carry me. My steady pace and the night breeze worked together like a hair dryer, draining the moisture from the hair that covered my body. It felt good. Really good.
When I got back home, I stood in front of my full-length mirror, staring at the mystery creature in front of me: neither bear nor ape, but some other being entirely, covered head to toe in glossy, slightly damp hair. The hair looked a bit like that of Sadako from The Ring, although it was only about half the length of hers. Actually, when I thought about it, I came to the realization that Sadako was a pretty impressive character. Not only could she emerge from wells, she could also come out of the TV set. Now, that was a special trick! And the same went for Okiku, Oiwa, and all the other famous ghosts I could think of. They all deserved credit. The ability to appear as a ghost was proof of an iron will.
Something terrible startled me out of my reverie. On both my arms, just where I’d had the permanent hair removal done, was a patch of hair much thinner than the rest and clearly much weaker. In terms of strength, shine, body—it was inferior in every
