One for Every Year
By: Gentian
Set in the Injectorverse, by Chatoyance
20200923
There once was a girl named Sadako, and Sadako had a dream. It was the kind of great, desperate, and utterly impossible dream dreamed by people with nothing left to loose, and nothing but their own hopeless longing to make real. It was a simple dream, on the face of it, but as the saying goes the devil is in the details, or in this case, the DNA; poor Sadako's DNA had been shredded by the supernal lance of exotic particles, and EM radiation born of a second star which shined, at 8:15 one morning, briefly, but with all the fury of matter-unmade just 580 meters above her city.
She survived the firestorms, the collapsing buildings, and the boiling rivers. She did not become a shadow-ghost, flash-etched onto the concrete for future generations to lament. She did not starve, neither was she eaten from within by the tainted waters which others, in their panicked desperation drank to sooth the cracking of their throats, or the burning, sloughing of their skins, though the black rain still fell upon her. No, poor Sadako lived to see her country defeated, and the streets of its remaining cities filled with the colorful hair, and eyes of the very same strange, pale peoples which had turned her world to ashen rubble, and poison bones.
Sadako wished to be free. Free of the pain, and stiffness in her joints, free from the swelling in her legs, and disfiguring purpura. She wanted to run relay again, like she once had in school. She hoped, and she wanted, and she wished with all her heart to be free of the “loo-kee-mee-ah,” as she called it, for it was a big word, the kind adults used, and a foreign one at that, and she was not yet 12 years old.
She tried to fight it, in her own way, as did the adults, but really, what could be done? Neither relatives, priests, nor doctors could give her hope. No human could. The Kami? Maybe. There were tales, yes, but the stories of gods, and magic were many, and rarely came to a happy end, for the humans; Tamamo no Mae was terrifying! But the cranes? They'd grant you a wish, for a price! One thousand origami idols of themselves, such was their pride. One for each of the thousand years the sacred animals were said to live, and really, what a cheap price it is, for a wish! Even she could do this, and she was not yet 12 years old.
And so, with hands that grew more, and more skilled, to counterbalance their loss in responsiveness, she folded. She folded, and folded, with the dedication of the desperate. Some say she never reached her goal, ending at only a few hundred. Others say she did, and half-again at that, but either way, her wish died as all eventually do, and as she did, too, in the hospital, at the age of 12.
At least, that's the story I've been told. It all happened long before I was born. When I first arrived in Japan I had never even heard of it. Or maybe I had, as some side-note in one of the history classes I was forced to sit through in school. The kind you memory-dump once the test passes. I remembered Hiroshima, though. And Nagasaki. I also remembered Pearl harbor, the Bataan Death March, and Unit 731, so when I finally did learn about Sadako, I wasn't too upset. They started the war, after all, and didn't follow any of the rules. They tried to torch our cities by sending balloon bombs through the jet stream, and wanted to steal Oregon from us. They used prisoners for bayonet practice, and would have treated Americans like they had the chinese in Nanking, if they had won. Vae victis was how they fought, so we did too. Sadly for them, they lost. Karma, if you ask me. Vae victis, indeed.
But if karma is real, if bad things happen to you because you do bad things to others, then what did I do to deserve this? What kind of karma makes you wake up as a horse? And why doesn't anyone notice?
MCAS Iwakuni is the kind of place you remember. It's broken into 2 halves; the good side has the BX, commissary, a video rental store, and some nicer buildings. The shitty side has a chow hall, admin offices, workshops, a supply depot, and some old barracks with double-shitty tile floors that have to be stripped, and waxed every damned field day. Guess which side I ended up in, on my deployment?
There's a golf course, and a theater in between, but only officers, and SNCOs go golfing, and the theater never seemed to be open. This is why I'd go to Hiroshima every weekend. 5-Corners is all well and good, and the California Chicken really does have some tasty sandwiches, but every shop on the strip that lets in foreigners is filled with other Marines, and sometimes you just want to get away from all that for a while.
Every weekend, unless I had duty, I'd cross over the benjo ditch separating the base, from the town, and walk to JR Iwakuni and from there, take an hour long train ride into Hiroshima. There were almost never other Americans that far out, but there were castles, gardens, museums, good restaurants, and ruins to explore. Another little known fact: they film a lot of porn here, and you'll run into it, if you walk the back-streets enough. Ask me how I know.
Anyway, that's how I found the peace park. That's how I found the A-Bomb museum, and signed my name in the visitor book. The Memorial to Children, too, surrounded by paper cranes, with a statue of Sadako herself set right on top. It's a beautiful city, like so many in Japan are, and it beat the hell out of getting blackout drunk on bad beer, and waking up in strange rooms after 1-night stands with the sailors, and Marines on base. They'd just call you a whore anyway, whether you let them pass you around, or not, so it was better just to avoid all of that, and go see Japan; how many chances would I get, you know? So I did, every weekend, and then one day, it happened.
Have you ever woken up with hooves? No, of course not, so you can imagine my surprise, when I did. Can you imagine going to bed normally, looking forward to the 96 which was about to begin, only when you wake up, you do so as a little horse-thing? You can understand that when my blankets fell away, and I saw not only that I suddenly had hooves, but also a deep green coat of fur, and a sky-blue mane, and tail, that I may have taken it a little poorly. I should be forgiven for maybe going a little strange. Don't you think?
I screamed, there's no sugar-coating that. I screamed, and screamed, until my headmate - that's the girl who shares my bathroom, since every 2 rooms in those shit-barracks does - came to see why I was screaming, only she couldn't. She was looking right at me, but couldn't see anything wrong! My jaw hit the floor, until I took her hand in my mouth to pull her to the mirror, and when I did, her eyes glassed over, and she stood like a zombie, until I began to wonder if I'd killed her, somehow.
Her head shook, as I watched, and her eyes fluttered like moths. A short, seemingly confused breath, like she was coming out of a fugue, then she began to talk to me as though nothing had happened: why was I screaming, and why was I naked, and holding her hand? I couldn't be a horse if I had hands! That proved it! I spat out her hand, and told her she must blind, so she picked up my skivies and threw them at me, saying she could see well enough to see that I'm naked, and that she wouldn't talk to me anymore until I put something on.
I stood there with my clothes caught on my back, and she did it again: her face blanking out, and eyes looking at me, but obviously not seeing. She wasn't even breathing.
“That's better,” she mumbled, suddenly, walking back through the head, in a daze. “You look better with clothes on. Don't forget your pants,” and closed the door to her room behind her.
What the fuck? What was going on? What was I going to do? What could I do? I was a fucking horse. Or insane. Nobody else could see it, and nobody else would believe it, so I must be nuts! But I have to move things with my mouth, and what was with my headmate going catatonic when she touched me, and why did she think I was suddenly clothed when my skivies draped over my neck, and how am I going to use the bathroom like this?
What kind of discharge does the Corps even give, if you start shitting on the floors, and claiming to be a colorful horse? My vision started to blur with worry. A horse! A green, and blue one, no less! Whoever heard of such a thing? Green, and blue. Red, and orange. Purple, yellow, pink...my eyes slowly come back into focus, and the splotches of color that had been dancing through my vision resolved into little paper birds. My senbazuru, the string of stacked cranes hanging from my rack. I'd started it a couple months ago, meaning to finish before my rotation back to the States. Every day folding a few out of the stack of colored paper I'd bought, along with an origami book, on the good side of the base. How many were left, now? 100? 200?
Hahahaha! Yes, of course! I can do that in 4 days. I can finish my cranes, and make a wish, and everything will be normal again, by the time I have to go back to work! It's all so simple, of course it will work! If magic can turn me into a horse, then magic can turn me back!
“Ha ha ha ha. Yes, it's all so simple, now!” I assured myself. The package of paper slid off the desk, in my teeth. “No need to worry.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I'm marching down Hon Dori Shopping Arcade, on my way to destiny! Yes, this will work! The sound of my hooves is clip-clop-clip-clopping back at me from the shopfronts under the covered-street's roof, but I don't care one little bit. “Hooves! I won't have to deal with you for much longer! No, I won't.”
It's late morning, and the oppressively bright Yamaguchi sunshine is making itself well known, even in the relative shade of the arcade. My camouflaged boot-camp ditty bag is tied to a yellow plastic shopping bag, emblazoned with a cute-little penguin, and the words Don Quixote in bold black kana. The pair are slung over my back, like saddlebags; one of them holds my wallet, my barracks keycard, and a fresh new set of clothes, the other held my senbazuru. The ones on the top of the string were barely crane-shaped at all, but were the best I could do with only my hooves, and mouth. Ever mindful of my headmate's reaction, I'd secured a T-shirt, and denim skirt around my barrel with some 550 cord to make sure they wouldn't come off; I can only imagine what the people around me are seeing, when they look at me, but if the MPs let me out the gate, and the local police haven't arrested me, yet, it's probably neither a small green, and blue horse, nor a naked American girl.
Along the covered street, I go. Right, at the Starbucks, and down the mile-long, covered straight-away. Past Lawson, Lotteria, and the other restaurants, and retailers, all the way to the end, where the comic shop, and Yellow Submarine's appropriately yellow, and black sign delineate the passage back out under the open sky.
A little further, and I find myself crossing Motoyasu bridge, to Peace Park. That's a good name for it, even though it isn't very peaceful, truth be told. Tourists of all nationalities crowd the area, and in all the time I've spent here, I can't remember a single day the place wasn't full of noisy, chittering students in uniforms from all over the country. Every student has to visit at least once, so they're never gone, no matter the time of year, and this is cherry blossom season; the ground is paved in blue tarpaulins and crowds of people are gathered on them to drink, eat, and savor the flower's ephemeral beauty.
With the blue sky; fragrant, pink flowers; calm rivers, and the ornamented stonework it would be easy to forget what happened here, but the broken, scowling ruin of the Genbaku Dome is always there, looming over the languidly flowing river, to remind.
I don't want to look at it right now, and I don't have to; the Children's Memorial is just ahead. There, the tall bell-shape rises over the gathered heads of students, and tourists. Not too many, today, surprisingly, and there's little trouble, pressing my way in. Some of them seem to notice, for a moment, as my fur touches their hands, or my tail slaps their legs, but then, like everyone else, their faces blank, and eyes go glassy, seemingly repulsed, to slip away, like oil from water, until at last, I'm under the statue.
Laying my bags at my hooves, I lip one open, and remove my string of paper cranes. A flick of my neck lays my senbazuru out at the monument, and I begin to pray.