WRAPPED IN PINK
Astral Season, Beastly Season by Tahi Saihate; translated by Kalau AlmonyHonford StarJanuary 2021Selected by Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
Tahi Saihate’s Astral Season, Beastly Season is a novel in two parts, each written and published separately in different literary magazines. In fact, the second section was only written because the first proved to be so popular. (This is a common feature of East Asian literature; for example, 2016 International Booker winner The Vegetarian was originally published as three separate stories before being brought together as one novel.) In the first part of Astral Season, Beastly Season, Saihate tells the story of two teenage boys who commit a series of copycat murders to draw the police’s attention away from their favourite pop star who has dismembered her boyfriend. In the second part, excerpted here, the schoolfriends of the murderous boys discuss why they were not the ones killed. The shift in pace between the two parts is jarring but extremely effective in raising philosophical questions about the awkward period of our school lives during which we are told to choose the kind of adult we want to become. – Anthony Bird and Taylor Bradley
When we made it to the top, there in front of us was a simple shrine. As Aoyama and I walked over to pray, Okayama stayed back alone looking up at the shrine building.
“What’s wrong?”
By the time I returned, Okayama seemed to have calmed down. He exhaled.
“I was wondering what it feels like to kill someone here.”
“What?”
“Did he bow in front of the shrine before he did it?”
Okayama’s eyes suddenly flung open. It was the same face he was making when we first met.
“Morishita killed so Mami-chan would like him. He killed in her place, and he will never tell anyone that’s why he did it. He did it all so she would love him. Did he pray for that? Here. To reach his goal he even killed someone who actually liked him... He’s so heinous. He’s disgusting. I get so mad when I think my sister was killed for something as pathetic as that...”
Aoyama and I had no words to respond.
“That’s why I’m going to expose Morishita for what he really is. When she hears that he killed someone who liked him, I’m sure even Mami-chan will be disappointed in him.”
I didn’t understand how Okayama felt. It’s possible even he didn’t understand. I didn’t sense any attachment in his words, not even to the name “Mami-chan”. Did he really want to show her what Morishita really is? I couldn’t completely believe that. He was just repeating the name of that idol to drown out some other voice. I didn’t know him well enough to say for sure that the other voice was one of panic.
What was Aoyama thinking now? It didn’t matter. I’ve never been able to understand his real feelings. All I knew was that no one was right, and no one was wrong, and none of that even mattered. Okayama took a long, shallow breath. It had been two years, but there were still flowers in the spot where Yamashiro had been found. Okayama sat there silently. He pulled a picture out of his wallet and placed it in front of himself. It was a picture of a cute girl singing.
“Who’s that?”
“This is Mami-chan. Yamashiro was also one of her fans.”
“What? Really?”
Okayama looked up at us and seemed shocked at our surprise.
“You guys didn’t really know him?”
“I didn’t,” Aoyama answered plainly.
“But he was in our group for our class trip,” I added hastily. Did I say that because it felt like Yamashiro was here with us? Why was I panicked?
“He was in our group, but I hardly talked to him,” Aoyama said.
“I talked to him a few times.”
Why did Okayama want to know about this, too?
“What kind of guy was he?”
“He was a bit dark, but there was nothing bad about him,” I answered.
“Huh? You mean you didn’t really know him?” As he said that, Okayama brought his palms together gently. “I saw Yamashiro at a lot of concerts. He was never with Morishita, so I never imagined they went to the same high school.”
Okayama † stood up and looked down at the picture he had just placed there. This idol called Mami-chan. Her thin body was wrapped in pink.
“W-wait. That means that Morishita killed Yamashiro, another fan, for this idol that he liked?”
“Maybe he agreed to be killed.”
“What? What does that even mean?”
“It’s just something I imagined.”
Okayama pulled a black notebook out of his bulging jeans pocket and began writing something down. When I looked, he was writing the name, “Yu-chan”, and, “Same cram school as Morishita sophomore year, seen talking by Aoyama. Yamashiro, Mami-chan’s fan friends with Morishita? Knew about Morishita? Accomplice?” Without so much as thinking, I snatched that notebook from him.
“What’s this?”
I flipped the pages and saw Aoyama’s phone number and address, “same group on class trip”, my name, Mami Aino’s name. My eyes landed on my name and Aoyama’s circled a bunch of times, and I saw that Okayama had written “survivors” there. That’s right. For some reason, somehow, we were saved by Morishita. We were overlooked. Even though we were in the same group as Tae-chan and Yamashiro. ◉
Born in Kobe, Tahi Saihate first started writing poems on the internet, and won the Nakahara Chūya Prize for her first poetry collection Good Morning (Shinchosha) in 2007. Her work inspired a 2018 exhibition at the OTA Art Museum and Library, and in 2019, Tahi presented her own visual artwork at the Yokohama Museum of Art. Astral Season, Beastly Season is her first work of fiction.
† Okayama is both a common surname in Japan meaning “hill” or “mountain”, and a prefecture of Honshu known for its delicious fruit. In recent times, the region has claimed folklore character Momotarō (or “peach boy”) as its local hero.