Chapter 010
IT SMELLED OF her mother.
For some reason the image of her mother’s left shoulder came to Shizue’s mind. Her eyes narrowed. In her contracted view sat one Hinako Sakura, wearing ghostly makeup.
“What…is this smell?” Shizue asked. Hinako eventually said incense, indifferently.
Hinako then squirreled up and looked up at Shizue.
It was a look beseeching approval of her response.
This occult-obsessed young girl probably thought it would be useless to tell Shizue the kind of incense and therefore chose the most uncomplicated answer.
If Shizue had to ask what the smell was, then the particulars of why Hinako bought the particular incense would be lost on her. However, one could say Hinako’s choice of incense was very well informed. Shizue didn’t know varieties of incense. She wouldn’t know any complicated incense names. Besides, she wouldn’t know to ask. Hinako’s choice was perfectly appropriate indeed.
This smells like my mother.
Shizue probably had it all wrong. It was just a thought.
Shizue had gone to what was called a funeral for the first time in her life four years ago. There, she’d smelled incense for what was probably the first time in her life as well.
She couldn’t be sure of the exact smell, if it was powdered or stick incense, but it was certainly the smell of the air she breathed on the occasion of her mother’s funeral, and it was an air she had not breathed since.
Therefore.
No. I must be mistaken.
That couldn’t be. Shizue chased worthless anguish out of her head. She tried to focus on what she could see instead of smell.
Hinako’s room was monochrome, as was Hinako herself.
There were no elaborate designs.
There were piles of discs around her desk, books lined up systematically. None of them had been published recently. They were of the scant remaining old volumes that hadn’t ever been digitized. It didn’t seem appropriate for a fourteen-year-old. They were probably very expensive.
“I didn’t realize you liked incense.”
“It’s calming. I don’t tolerate perfumes and volatile man-made fragrances well. Do you hate it?”
“I don’t hate incense. It’s as you say—calming,” Shizue said, and Hinako made a strange face.
“Strange.”
It wasn’t a response, but Hinako’s gaze shifted to Shizue’s bag. Shizue caught on. People probably associated her directly with the disinfectant wipes she carried around with her everywhere.
“I don’t like filth or anything, but I actually can’t stand the smell of antiseptics. I’d sooner smell smoke.”
Hinako looked like she sort of understood but not really.
“I said this in the beginning, but…” Shizue tried to rein in the conversation from this tangent. “This isn’t an official visit, so if you refuse to talk to me I will go. Please don’t hesitate to tell me now. I did go ahead and ask your parents for permission to speak with you today.”
Forcing an interrogation of a minor could be considered violence in certain cases.
That was why you always had to speak with a guardian whenever you were interviewing them, to gain consent from the subject. If anything happened as a result of a direct conversation with the subject, regardless of their consent, the meeting became inadmissible as evidence.
Still, as a counselor, Shizue was in a position to insist upon an interview, and in this case, legal enforcement would creep up out of nowhere if guardians refused, no matter how unofficial the interview request.
Hinako’s parents seemed perplexed, and though they’d approved the interview, it was impossible to know what Hinako was thinking.
“What do you want?” Hinako asked.
“Huh?”
Shizue was caught off guard.
“Please go home. I don’t want to talk.”
Shizue had been prepared for that response somewhere in her mind.
No, she’d even been anticipating it.
“Is there a problem? Was there some trouble with the paperwork?”
“Yes, there is. There is a problem. Even if this is a personal visit, I don’t like that it’s being recorded.”
“I wanted to consult with you privately about something,” Shizue said.
“Consult…me.”
“Well, yes. I have a question for you.”
“That’s weird.”
Hinako sagged the celluloid-like skin between her eyebrows, fogging her features. “A counselor, learning from a child…”
“Yes.”
Shizue slackened her shoulders.
This was obviously a way of gaining the respect and trust of her counterpart, but it was also a means for Shizue to get over her confusion. Shizue had a lot of reservations about coming to this interview.
“Is it strange?”
“Isn’t it? Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Really? I don’t think so. You learn about topics you don’t know much about by questioning people who do. I want to ask something of someone who knows a lot about it—that’s not particularly strange.”
“I’m…a minor,” Hinako said.
She was still looking at Shizue’s bag.
“Age has nothing to do with this. People who’ve lived longer don’t necessarily know more. I get lectured once a week on statistics by one of my kids.”
“But I don’t have anything I can teach you.”
“What about the mantic arts?”
She had to start somewhere.
It was still a difficult subject to ask about.
“How do the mantic arts work?”
Her motives had to be so blatant.
Sure enough, Hinako dropped her shoulder, disappointed.
“Are you suggesting that my hobbies and tastes are ill-advised? In that case as in the past, counseling—”
“Look, that’s not what I’m here for. What I’m asking is…are your mantic arts always right?”
What kind of question was that?
Shizue was once again disgusted with herself.
“Right?” Hinako’s brow furrowed.
“Yes. No offense, but there are not many people who believe in mantic arts in this day and age. I mean, all kinds of people did before my time.
Mantic arts were extremely popular. There were even on-air broadcasts.
Astrologists on, every day.”
“That’s not mantic arts.”
Hinako darted a sharp glare at Shizue.
Shizue jumped. Hinako had never spoke out like that before. Not once…
“What do you mean it’s not mantic arts?”
“It’s different.”
Hinako adjusted her seat. “Information obtained in such stupid ways…to make predictions. They cannot be trusted. Am I right?”
“Yes. There was a lawsuit about twenty years ago. The court ruled that dissemination of baseless future projections with any pretense of truth couched in a lack of specifics was a menace.”
The media had exercised some self-restraint toward mantic arts since then. Actually, it probably started as self-restraint, but it was difficult to call it restraint now. People just stopped seeking it. They stopped trusting things they couldn’t explain. That was all.
Moreover, what went on underground was totally beyond Shizue’s knowledge.
“You’re referring to the court case over astrology broadcasts from twenty-two years ago,” Hinako said.
With her cutting in so matter-of-factly, it seemed Hinako was much more familiar with this case than Shizue.
“It’s as you state, Ms. Fuwa, that the media had been broadcasting baseless conjecture of the future on a daily basis. If you look at it from today’s ethical standards, the media at the time were without consideration or integrity. Those plaintiffs from the lawsuit were people who’d suffered economic and physical consequences of believing in these predictions, and also those who’d exhibited symptoms of neuroses or dependence on it. The defendants claimed it was only for recreational use and whether or not one believed in it should be left up to the viewer, but that was not any kind of excuse. It’s irresponsible. If it’s information, it’s worth believing. It is positively criminal to be proclaiming this information as fact. It all happened before I was born, but I still resent that this happened.”
“Really?” Shizue was more impressed by how she spoke than by what she said and for a moment was unable to respond.
I didn’t realize she was so open-minded.
Shizue was a little surprised.
“Eventually the media and the governing department that oversaw the media’s actions lost the case and paid an unheard-of settlement. The verdict was appropriate, but it resulted in a major misconstruction.”
“Misconstruction?”
“Yes. Today, people have the mantic arts confused with baseless predictions of the future. Such foolish predictions are simple, but the phrase is in everyone’s mouth. Of course those things will be disdained, but as a result, the mantic arts also have been disdained.”
She seemed remorseful.
Shizue got that impression clearly from the way Hinako spoke about it.
She didn’t know what could be the basis of that remorse. This itself was a baseless thought.
“The mantic arts are not the same as predicting the future.”
“You’re right. Then it’s more like a presentiment?”
“That’s even worse,” Hinako said. “A presentiment simply means there is a ‘pre’-existing ‘sentiment.’ That kind of thoughtless use of words is what damages society.”
That’s…
Shizue had only just thought the same exact thing a few days ago. Shizue examined Hinako’s face a second time. The view transfixed Shizue’s eyes.
“You’re the one who taught me how destructive thoughtless speech can be, Ms. Fuwa. I have been deeply affected by that wisdom since I received it three years ago. I believe culture is the same as the human heart.”
“Ahh.” Shizue remembered something about this conversation now.
However…
Shizue was somewhat astonished to hear her opinions coming from other mouths. To be affected by it and realize that no matter how careful she was, she would be a careless adult too.
“I’m sorry.”
She meant it.
“But this is precisely what I wanted to ask you about. I’m not making fun or disdaining it. I really don’t know anything. The mantic arts are—”
“The word uranai.”
Hinako interrupted Shizue.
“The word is composed of boku, divination, and kuchi, or speech.”
It was only after Hinako continued to explain the meaning of divination that Shizue realized it was the Chinese character she was referring to.
“Boku is like ‘-mancy,’ and refers to divination. Are you familiar with osteomancy—the idea that glimpses of the future can appear in the bones of long-dead animals?”
“Well, no.”
“The theory is that one can interpret fortunes in fissures that have formed in a heated tortoise shell or other sort of bone matter. However, we know now that a shell cannot crack solely through exposure to the sun, and so some other physical event must have contributed to the fissure. In any case, the character for boku is a shape that appeared on tortoise shells that were used in these divinations. The character for ‘mouth’ was added for ideological reasons.”
“Please don’t be mad when I say this,” Shizue became stern. “I think I now understand the etymology of the word uranai. But you know, isn’t it still a form of divination? I’m only saying this because I don’t know, but if the symbols of divination are created by heat or wear or whatever other kind of physical effect, can’t the results be swayed?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Hinako said plainly.
“In which case, they appear to be coincidences, or else they are artificially handled, but either way, it’s a mystery.”
“In this situation you can’t really claim artificial manipulation. Making something appear to be a coincidence still implies a mystery.”
“What do you mean?”
“A divination implies that god has kept a secret. It implies we do not know why something has become the way it is. But the cause of the symbols of divination in and of themselves are not unknown.”
“Coincidence is divine, in other words.”
“Strictly speaking you can’t define a coincidence. Every phenomenon is only ever the result of one exact cause. Like you said, it is possible to fabricate the fissures in a shell, but there are so many processes required. Then by some interwoven process of application and nature, the complex process leads to unique grooves in the shell. There are an infinite set of minute and subtle circumstances that lead to the finished object of divination. To grasp every single one of the circumstances involved in the meta-phenomena that creates the symbols is not humanly possible. If it were we’d just do the math. And if that were the case we would in fact actually be predicting the future. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not. I guess that would be a calculation of the future.”
“Yet even in this modern age of machines, we still cannot quantify these circumstances.”
“You’re right,” Shizue said.
“Even the central mainframe that runs this country can’t predict the way a tortoise shell will crack. At best it is an estimation. And likely to be off.”
Even hundreds of years of forecasting the weather hadn’t yielded any amount of certitude.
“So people now call the unpredictable mere coincidence. However, it is not amazing that a tortoise shell can be broken with heat and penetration.”
“You’re right. It’s just physics.”
“Divination can’t escape coincidence. It is merely the understanding that coincidence is the will of god. It doesn’t affirm that something abnormal will happen, and it’s not especially unscientific.”
“It’s a question of speech.”
“It’s a question of interpretation.”
Shizue thought for a moment.
“This will of god you speak of. What is the god that—”
“Naturally, god’s existence was disproven many centuries ago, and what remains of synthesis religions have been disproven as well. There is no god.”
“Then?”
“To presume the existence of a god is itself a contradiction because it assumes the need to have to prove it. In the last century, people were obsessed with pinpointing the way they ought to be thinking and feeling, but that was problematic too. They thought that questioning one’s existence was the nature of existence. Obviously, ‘to exist’ doesn’t exist.”
Shizue raised a hand. “Wait. I get it. I didn’t want to have a spiritual debate with you though. Besides I’m not very good at talking about these kinds of things.”
She’d had enough of logic long ago. She remembered philosophy feeling like a cul-de-sac. But. A long time ago even children would espouse the limits of reductionism, and people today were still reductive in the explanation of things, but at the end of the day every thing was measured by deduction speculation. Shizue was the same.
It was because it was simple. Humans couldn’t swallow the world whole. That was why they couldn’t let themselves go without relying on something. While smart people waxed philosophical, what was once an unquantifiable world had slowly transformed completely into pure numbers.
With enough contemplation, the world Shizue lived in now could be completely digitized. She didn’t know the specifics—binary codes, chakras, yin-yang, numerology—but she was in the habit of understanding the world through numbers.
Of course it was a delusion.
Numbers could be a concept and not always a reality.
Between one and two was an infinite number of numbers. But people ignored what lay between one and two for simplicity’s sake.
A world expressed only in numbers was completely flat, without depth. Shizue lived by projecting depth onto this shallow world.
That was why it was difficult to talk about things between one and two.
“This…divination…”
“I understand,” Hinako said curtly.
“Understand…”
“May I? On top of this disc?” Hinako lifted a thin finger and pointed at the monitor disc next to Shizue. “My writing utensils have fallen over there.”
“This?”
It was a laser pen.
“Yes. Do you think the fact that it has just fallen is a good or bad thing?”
“Good or…I don’t know.”
“It’s not that you don’t know. It is neither.”
“Well in that case, if we’re being really serious, it’s probably a bad thing. It will take physical effort to pick it up. Unless you just decide to ignore it, it’s a minus,” Shizue said.
“But say for example you discover something hidden under the desk when you go to pick up the pen. How about now?”
“Well in that case it’s a good thing.”
“Right,” Hinako said. “However, there’s no causal connection between finding something under your desk and dropping a pen.”
“Well, no, you’re right there. It’s impossible. It’s a coincidence…oh.”
She was saying something about how you can’t escape coincidence.
“Then drawing a causal connection between events which are unrelated is—”
“It’s a little different,” Hinako said. “By stating the possibility of a conclusive causal relationship through divination, you can correctly assume there is no relationship between the two events. Things always inevitably happen. It’s not good or bad. Moralizing is a value judgment. Only humans make value judgments.”
Of course they do. Only humans could have two opposing interpretations of the same phenomenon.
“It’s an extreme example, but, say someone dies. Socially, it’s considered a negative occurrence. However, say something big happens as a result of this person’s passing, and all of society greatly benefits from it. You could say that it was actually a good thing.”
“And you’re saying that’s—”
“That is fundamental.”
Hinako looked up through her sharply cut bangs at Shizue. “Divinations do not predict what will happen. No one can know what will happen in the future. Divinations determine how what is happening and what will happen should be interpreted.”
“Interpreted—”
“Remember that’s what I said in the beginning,” Hinako said. “The character boku means determining a fortune. It is not a prediction or a look into the future. It takes what is going on now and prepares you for what may happen next. A divination is the utterance of this suggestion. As it stands, nothing is positive or negative, so we don’t have any determinations on how to interpret events. People are confused by this, which is precisely why once they’ve surpassed understanding the physical they make a positive or negative determination and label events as such. That is the nature of divination.”
“I see…”
Shizue finally understood. At the least it was a more manageable explanation than anything at the communications center. Hinako had always seemed frightened during interviews. Unless she was talking about something she was very familiar with, she never had such cogent arguments.
It all amounted to the fact that nothing was learned from counseling.
No matter how much data they collected, it was just an accumulation. Meaningless. If you didn’t know how to read the information, it was pointless. Merely organizing numbers couldn’t even let you know a person’s face.
“Prayer is the same,” Hinako continued. “Sincere prayer to a god is not unreliable. But today there are more people who don’t rely on it.
Prayer is thought of as unreliable.”
“Well—”
“But that’s because people pray with a vehemence for some divine intervention to magically alter the course of nature. Consequently they are asking for a ready blessing, an answer to their prayers. That is the problem.”
Probably.
“I feel very differently about these answers to prayers,” Hinako said. “Blessings are just positive phenomena, and in simpler terms they’re just luck or fortune. Many people believe prayer is requesting good luck from a god. In that case prayer certainly is evil. But they are mistaken. Luck and fortune are rewards for particular actions. Prayer, in actuality, is to announce what actions you are about to undertake before God and to ask to be able to accomplish your goals.”
“Like a declaration of resolve?”
“Yes, but before God, which is more powerful than proclaiming to man.”
“God…”
It was inevitable they’d talk about God.
Shizue didn’t want to start dwelling on this. That was probably why she’d never gotten much further than this point in the conversation.
Shizue tried in life never to dwell on this subject.
However.
There was one thing she was sure of. This Hinako Sakura was no victim of delusion. Shizue had probably wanted to perform this interview to make certain of that. In that sense she could say this was a fruitful interview.
“So I wanted to ask…” Shizue said with some force. Hinako immediately returned to being a shy girl.
Hinako lowered her gaze, shrugged, and said, “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“I talked too much.”
“That’s not true. I think I really understand now. I’d like to hear more about it later.”
She was half serious. Hinako demonstrated an indecipherable, impatient attitude.
“Oh…did you not want to have a conversation about this with me, perhaps?”
She probably didn’t want any of this on record.
Hinako nodded weakly.
“I understand. Well, if I ever want to hear more I’ll just come over.”
Hinako certainly wouldn’t want to hear that from Shizue. It would be unnatural for a counselor and her charge to meet and speak privately.
Shizue’s voice dropped off, and she nervously looked down. Who was the charge here?
“I wanted to ask about Yuko Yabe,” Shizue managed, if clumsily.
She was apprehensive.
“Was Yuko asking you these kinds of questions as well?”
“Umm…”
She didn’t like how long Hinako paused. Once this door was shut she knew it would be difficult to swing open.
Hinako stole a quick glance at Shizue’s eyes as if beseeching permission to speak.
Shizue nodded.
This was how she knew Hinako normally behaved.
“That girl just wanted me to read her a divination.”
“Like tell her fortune?”
“Yes. It seemed she was frightened of medical exams.”
“You mean the physical checkups we did recently at the center?”
That day, Hinako had run into Yuko Yabe.
“That girl’s illness would probably go undetected in a simple medical exam.”
“Illness?”
Shizue didn’t know of any medical conditions that deserved special mention, and she’d just looked at Yabe’s file not a day ago.
The results of her physical were good.
In fact her condition was excellent. Yabe was in the top tier of health. Level A, and even in that level she was in the top 10 percent.
“Was Yuko somehow convinced that she was sick?”
“She didn’t appear to know beforehand,” Hinako answered. “But she did say someone had indicated it to her.”
“Indicated?”
“Yes. If it really were this illness, her life was in grave danger.”
“Her life? She has a life-threatening illness?”
“But it was something that went undetected in the medical exam, so…”
“That’s not possible,” Shizue said.
Those physicals were quite meticulous.
Today’s physicals bore no comparison to the ones Shizue underwent as a child. Today’s physicals included a cancer screening and a full-body scan.
They were scrupulous but apparently still had discrepancies.
In the first place, the Food Agency and the Science Council and other central administrative departments lurked in the background to encourage extra diligence in these already minute exams performed on every child in every community center in the care of the National Youth Welfare Department.
What started it all was a sharp rise in deteriorated liver function in minors. A new division was formed to look into the cause in the preparation of elements of synthetic food products five years earlier. These exams were the result of those first tests.
There was no medical link established between the food and liver problems, but since there was no ubiquitous distribution of synthetic food products in the past, the central administration decided to be cautious.
“Is there such a disease that can’t be detected by those exams?”
“I don’t think there is,” Hinako said. “That girl was…If there were a sign of misfortune following her, she thought it might be this illness.”
“So were the results of your divination not good?”
“Terrible,” Hinako answered in a soft voice.
“According to what you were saying earlier, Hinako, does that mean you determined that whatever her situation is now or is about to become would, uh, be bad?”
“It means not that she should stop being optimistic, but that she must be prepared for anything.”
“I suppose I wouldn’t understand the basis of that statement.”
“You aren’t supposed to, in principle. Occult actually means ‘to hide.’ Still…”
“Yes?”
“Her results were so unusual,” Hinako said apologetically.
“Unusual how?”
“She would encounter a wolf.”
“A wolf? You mean like the animal?”
“Yes. An animal that’s been extinct since the last century.”
“I know that much, but you said she was going to encounter one?” What did that mean?
As if detecting Shizue’s hesitation, Hinako said, “It’s probably an omen. Like, a warning to avoid a situation.”
“Avoid a situation?”
“That’s the fortune I determined for her. As I said earlier, this is not a cut-and-dried prediction that she would encounter an extinct animal.
Whatever does or doesn’t happen to her…is simply avoidable. That’s what the fortune meant.”
“Avoidable…”
“Yes. I wanted to tell her as soon as possible, but simultaneously I was hesitant.”
No doubt telling someone bad news would be difficult.
“But Yuko begged me not to send her the results virtually.”
“Really. Was there a reason the results couldn’t be sent in a message?”
“Otherwise I had no choice but to tell her at the communication session. But…”
Yuko Yabe did not come to lab that day.
Did that mean she had in fact encountered a wolf?
Shizue was confused.