Chapter Text
“Auntie Aira?”
The lonely landscape outside the car window is a blur of silvers and blues. In the distance, the moon follows along, sometimes hiding, but always reemerging, cold and watching. Goosebumps prickle on Moko’s arms as the AC’s gusts brush against them.
Auntie Aira’s steady, sweet voice carries from the drivers seat. “What’s wrong, sugar?” she calls, high and cheerful.
“Where’re we going?” Moko asks, lolling her head against the door and staring up at the shadowed silhouette of carefully coiffed hair and set shoulders.
Those shoulders sink just a little as Auntie replies, “Home, baby. We’re going to Grandma’s house.”
“Oh, okay. I miss Grandma.” Moko smiles, then she wrinkles her nose, “Auntie Aira, I don’t have a toothbrush. We left too fast for me to get it.”
“That’s okay. Grandma will have extras.” Her voice is suddenly hard to hear over the AC. It’s so cold in the car.
Moko looks back to the window. Out of a large, imposing, dark cloud the moon reappears, illuminating everything. It highlights the scraggly trees just starting to recover from winter, making the branches seem thinner and more menacing. Shadows play on the ground and run beside the car. If she imagines, she can almost see a head, like a dog, in those shadows. Moko grins. The silvery edges remind her of her dog Laika. The twisted, gnarled scene smooths out and becomes a game, staring Laika and her lopsided, panting smile.
“Auntie Aira?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Are Mom and Dad gonna come visit too?” asks Moko, a yawn muffling the beginning of her question, “They should bring Laika so she can run a lot. And Mom said she wanted crab.” She sighs, dreamily. “Grandma makes really yummy crab. And I think Dad wants to get some old magazines Grandma has. Something about radio waves.”
Absently, Moko reaches to the seat beside her, where Vamola sits. At her beckoning, Vamola takes her hand and holds it between her own, slowly warming it.
Another yawn sighs from her, but Moko continues talking. “Vam Vam, did you know that Dad has a radio with a huge receiver? He was talking to people in Canada with it. He speaks really good English. They were talking about Big Foot, I think.”
Her eyes grow heavy as she rambles. She shifts from her place against the door to Vamola’s warmer, more comfortable lap. The seatbelt digs into her side, but it’s so much nicer than the cold, hard door that she doesn’t mind.
“Big Foots aren’t very common in Japan but people see their footprints all the time in Canada…” She trails off. Vamola is running her freshly done nails softly along Moko's arm. It makes her think of the strange smell of the salon and of Auntie Aira chatting with the lady who cleaned Moko's fingernails. How Vamola had pointed at the different colors she could choose from so excitedly.
Moko gazes at her nails, so neat and trim. She'd chosen blue-green sparkles at Vamola's suggestion because it matched the new earrings Auntie got her. They glitter satisfyingly in the moonlight.
Sleep pulls at her eyelids.
~
Jiji sits on his apartment balcony, Laika snoozing with her fluffy snoot on his thigh, as he stares up at the barely-there stars. He's always liked the idea of constellations and their stories. When he was a kid, he'd scowered the library for mythos and star maps. The affinity probably started during the quiet camping trips with his dad. They had spent hours tracing pictures in the stars and making up tall tales to match.
They would've been good friends as kids, him and Ken.
If they'd met earlier, maybe Jiji wouldn't have made fun of Momo back then. He'd only been going along with the other kids because they seemed to be having fun anyway. He didn't mean it.
If they'd met earlier, he'd have more time.
A notification buzzes the phone in his pocket. It interrupts his melancholy musings.
'Wonder if that's him. Always calls around this time.' He thinks carelessly. It isn't until he's reading the little banner (just Vamola letting him know their current ETA towards the shrine) that it hits him.
Ken's not calling tonight.
Jiji won't see the contact page awash in tacky neon green that he hasn't bothered to update since high school. Nor will he be spontaneously blessed with the dorky profile photo he snagged of him from Ken's only yearbook (6th grade, poor guy looked hella awkward).
No Momo cooking in the background, no more Ken complaining about the egregious lab reports put together by his poor 9th graders, none of the friendly bickering sprinkled like salt across the conversation. It's strange that those are what he's stuck on. The cooking and the complaining. Their evening talks were always more than that. The occult was a topic that came up no matter what. And Ken would let Jiji talk his ear off about sports with the same surety. Momo would inevitably steal the phone, and Ken, he'd just put himself to work while she gabbed, stirring their food, taking out the trash, whatever needed doing.
There's so much he can't believe is gone.
He stares blankly at his lock screen slowly going dim. It's a picture of them all hanging out outside a convenience store. They're all holding goodies like video game prizes up towards the camera, practically sparkling. Momo had held up the phone with her psychic hands. His eyes start to gloss over as he gazes at Momo's beaming face. The little pixels do nothing to capture that strange, beautiful light she exuded, the aura of something extraterrestrial and absolutely ethereal. Electronics never do well with cosmic energy and she is no different. Momo always came out a touch blurry, a touch duller, in photos, features smeared against an inadequate screen.
A sharp prick of hurt tears at his soul and rips a tiny hole.
No picture held the true beauty and power of the woman- except for one extraordinary painting.
Back when Ken and her were still newlyweds, when the date on the calendar meant everything, Ken had agonized for weeks over the perfect aniversary gift. Finally, he'd confided in Jiji, head in his hands, that he hadn't the faintest idea of a gift that would actually mean something. He knew what she liked, obviously, what kinds of clothing she oggled in magazines, the shows she enjoyed, or the food she savored. Jiji had laughed so hard he'd choked on his smoothie. The answer had presented it's self so clearly to him that Ken's metaphorical blindness was rendered ridiculous.
"You draw, right buddy?" he'd forced out through spurting, spluttering chuckles.
Ken nodded slowly, sallowing his dark coffee carefully, as if absorbing the question, Jiji's mirth, and his drink at the same time overwhelmed his operating system.
Jiji whipes the excess smoothie from his chin and says, "Then draw her! Aren't you always telling me she never looks right in photos?"
So he did. Over and over again. To be fair, Ken had drawn her many, many times in the past. But this was different. This had intention. Instead of pulling his hair out over lines recreationally, this had purpose. He practiced with watercolours constantly, whether on drawings of her, or of cryptids for his magazine. The final product wasn't complete in time for their aniversary. Despite that, he had pages and pages of sketches to present her with. He'd described everything to Jiji in detail, a meager thank you to return the preciously fortiuitous suggestion.
Everything, from the warm, homey details of the kisses he woke her with and the breakfast they made, the sweetness of the exchange of gifts and the joy of her smiling tears. He'd glossed over the lewder, dirtier details of how the evening had closed, but Jiji could imagine how loving it was. Nothing dirty about love.
Jiji, ever the comedian, had laughed at Ken's blushing admitances. He joked that they had given him a gift instead.
"What does that even mean, Jiji?" Ken chuckles, a slight edge of nervousness souring it. He can almost see the man adjusting his glasses in the empty air above the dark phone screen as it lays on the table. Jiji leans over it, making a stupid face for no one in particular.
"Well," he says all goofy like those western cartons teachers used to put on in their English classes, "Yer makin' me an uncle, arn'tcha?"
The silence on the other end of the line makes Jiji afraid he'd messed up. He prepares to walk it back, almost starting to force out a laugh to cover the awkward pause, when-
"Yeah." Ken's voice, warm, giddy, and soft.
Jiji's throat tightens. He doesn't have anything silly or over-the-top that would make this moment better.
"Yeah." He parrots. Joy makes him feel a little stupid. It really sucks they live in different precints. Jiji wishes he could hug him.
The painting was completed somewhere in the midpoint between joy and more joy. More joy had a wrinkly little face and whispy dark hair.
Jiji leans backward until his head touches the uneven planks of his balcony floor. Against the backdrop of faded stars, he tries to picture the painting in his mind's eye. It's been some time since he's seen it, so the image is difficult to conjure. The gravity-defying lines of her hair, the sparkle of her eyes, the intense aura of more surrounding her, it all coagulates into a messy sludge when he tries to picture the whole thing at once. But each individual element is bright, clear as moonshine, in its place.
The painting now hangs above a slim table in the upstairs hall of the shrine.
He'll make the trip up there tomorrow. Appointments be damned. In this moment, it doesn't matter that he's built his reputation in this precinct piece by piece, doesn't matter that there are children and their parents expecting him to provide, and it certainly doesn't matter that he just wrestled himself out of internship hell. The pediatrics office can wait.
He makes a call. There's no one in the office at this time of night, of course, but he'll just leave it on the answering machine for the poor secretary in the morning. She'll call him in a panic. He'll explain again that there's been a death (deaths plural, his brain unhelpfully supplies) in the family and he has things to take care of. He'll explain again that he'll be out indefinitely and then politely cut off her splutterings with an excuse about driving.
A single, belated tear rolls down his cheek. He huffs out a stuttering laugh.
"I havn't even cried yet." The words sit, incredulous, in the empty air alongside Laika's snores. Everything had happened too quickly for crying.
Arriving at the appartment. Explosion rocking the complex. Alarms and sprinklers going off. Running up the stairs to find Laika pawing at the half destroyed door.
Fire.
Bodies.
A frantic call to emergency services.
At some point Aira had arrived and then everything had finally slowed down a little. She could answer questions. She could take charge and sign papers. She could identify bodies. Jiji couldn't do those things. One glance at the mangled forms and he was diving for a bush to hurl in.
Aira had emerged from that ambulance with a dull, haunted look. Even still, she'd patted his shoulder and whiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of her coat. Then, in turn, he'd held her, sitting on the curb, as she sobbed into his sweatshirt.
At some point, the ambulance with the bodies drove away and the police disuaded the slowly accumulating crowd. There were no more pre-made questions that went neatly on forms when answered. Jiji took Laika to his apartment. Aira wiped her face and redid her makeup. She met Vamola and Moko at the terriyaki place and put up a brave face. Vamola is an angel. How she convinced Moko that the plans for tonight's dinner had changed, Jiji will never be able to fathom. But if she hadn't been so quick thinking, Moko might have seen-
Something wet laps at Jiji's cheek. He looks to the side. Laika's shining black eyes stare back at him. Another tear squezes it's way out and down, and Laika licks it. She whines at him and baps her snout against the side of his face.
Jiji pets her, trying to tamp down the sob forcing out his throat. "Yeah, girl. I'm-," A keening noise of despair exits him against his will and suddenly the tears just won't stop.
He curls into Laika, holding her warmth against him. She just whines even more pathetically and buries her nose into his hair.
Pathetic is right.
He should call Aira.
~
Moko blinks and someone is yelling.
"Pull yourself together Jin Enjoji!" The voice barks. A muted crackling response comes from a glowing phone and is cut off with a scoff, "Stop blubbering. I can't understand anything you're saying."
"Aira, shhhh." Vamola hushes. A hand begins to card through Moko's dark hair. She sinks into the cozy feeling again.
There's a grumble from the driver's seat, and then a low tone, "Was the dog okay? I didn't see it." The phone murmurs and Auntie sighs. "Oh, thank goodness." For a minute, silence settles over the car. The only noise is the crunch of the worn road.
"Look, Jiji, I'm sorry for snapping. That… that was cruel. I just…"
Crackle, crackle.
"I know. I just keep thinking that maybe I could've done something. And- and I'm worried about her."
Crackle, murmur.
"I was, like, four when it happened. I didn't understand it. She's old enough to understand."
Murmur, crackle.
"Wha- yeah, okay. I- I can do that."
The strong, unflappable shadow of Moko's favorite aunt crumbles when the call disconnects. A faint fear begins build at the bottom of her ribs. Even still, Vamola's gentle hand and the sway of the car soothe her back to sleep
And in this sleep, she dreams.
~
The scene enfolds in perfect clarity. The sun shines on grass as it sinks lower and lower, painting everything orange and purple. Moko sits stiffly on the pick-nick blanket, knees tingly beneath her. In front of her, Mom sits in the same way with a hand pointed at the sky.
Like an old movie on mute, Mom speaks with no sound, but Moko knows the script. Clench your lower abs and imagine your chi shooting up towards the sky! Moko mirrors her and points her hand to the sky.
Mom places her hands on Moko's shoulders. She mouths 'Ready?' and Moko nods, steeling her core. Mom gives her a push. Like so many other times, Moko wobbles and tips over, landing backwards in the grass.
Laughing, Mom drags her back on to the pick-nick blanket. A golden glow frames her hair like a halo. Her smile is so bright, so wide, that even frustrated by failure, Moko can't help but smile too. Mom draws her into her arms and holds her.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
The sun sets.
~
When she wakes the car is gone. In it's place is the expanse of stars that has always stretched over the shrine. She's being held, just like in her dream. Gravel crunches softly underfoot. The world is hazy.
"Momma?" she whispers blearily. It's too dark in the yard to see much of anything. All she knows is that the arms around her are safe. It must be Mom.
"No, Koko. Just me." Vamola whispers, a little froggily, like she needs to clear her throat.
The innate safety of "Mom" falls away, but that's okay. Vamola is nice too. The slight fear simmering in her stomach returns, though, bringing with it a faint, but desperate want for home. Moko snuggles against Vamola's chest in an attempt to crowd out the fear with warmth, and murmurs, "Arn't I too big to carry now?" It's been ages since anyone's even tried to carry her. Such were the perils of growing up, it seems.
Vamola lets out a soft sigh. It ghosts along the top of Moko's head and sounds so strangly sad. "You're very tall now, yes. But I am stronger than you are tall." The flickering garage light catches her face and reveals the small smile directed at Moko. That too is sad.
They make their way into the house. Vamola sets her down in the genkan and they put their shoes neatly off to the side. Just as they step into the living room, Moko suddenly jerks back towards the door. "I left Affton in the car!" she says, too loudly for the quiet shrine. It bounces off the old wood floors and echoes into the hollows of the house. She stuffs her feet halfway into her shoes, throws open the door, and runs out into the cold night.
The car is a shadow in the driveway. She yanks on the passenger door, but it doesn't budge. It doesn't register that the door is merely locked. Half-awake, surrounded by nighttime, in a home once so familiar become strange, Affton is a prisoner of war, held captive by her silly notion that he might've liked to ride up front.
Vamola arrives with the keys like a triumphant infantry. The button eyes of the alien plush seem to well with tears as Moko frees him of the acursed seat belt. She gathers him tenderly into her arms and they return to the house, Affton in tow.
After Moko's outburst, the house seems to have shaken off the dust from itself. There is a light on in the kitchen. Grandma leans against the counter, sipping a drink that smells strongly of green. Her hair falls about her shoulders and drips down like liquid silver. The skin around her eyes is red.
This scene, Grandma, ethereal and downtrodden, bathed in the warm light of the kitchen, burns itself into Moko's memory.
Grandma says something about a futon and pajamas up in Moko's old room. Asks her if she's hungry. Moko clutches Affton and shakes her head. Upstairs, she finds her old room and a set of pjs meant for a girl a couple years older than her. They're pink.
The hallway is dark and endless. It wraps aroud the rectangular lay out in one continues stretch. Uncertainty makes her step a little lighter, watch her socked feet as they press against old-looking floors, treading like a ghost in a new haunting spot as she returns from the bathroom. Auntie Aira had been right. Grandma did have an extra toothbrush for her.
It's so dark, dark enough she's afraid she'll miss the door for her room if she's not careful. Once, when she was little, she got lost in the house. She'd found a room pasted from top to bottom with paper wards. Incense burned unceasing in an ornate holder atop a little crate. There was two photos. A man and a woman. The lady had looked a lot like Mom- but it wasn't her. Mom had told her, later, when she'd gotten herself unlost, that they were her parents. That they had died in a car crash a long time ago, so that meant Grandma was really her Great-Grandma instead. Moko's actual Grandpa and Grandma were in the afterlife now.
Moko pauses with her hand on the door knob of her room. What was once a barely there notion has bloomed into full on homesickness. It's silly. The shrine was her home for most of her life. But she can't help desperately wanting to go back to the apartment where there's Laika and Mom and Dad and all of her things. Where it's cozy. Where it's not dark and cold.
She steps into the room. Affton blinks at her from his place resting on the futon. He's illuminated slightly by the window shedding moonlight. Moko crouches beside him and gives him a pat. "Vam Vam can call them," she explains quietly. Affton, who had been wondering about this, does nothing, but appreciates the information nonetheless.
Vamola is in the kitchen rubbing her eyes. Her short hair appears to be mused by an aborted attempt at rest. She flinches when Moko enters.
Moko whispers, "Vam Vam, can you call Mom for me? Please?"
There's a moment where Vamola hesitates. A long moment where she just looks at Moko with this strange weight, her mouth slightly open, on the brink of saying something. Moko rocks on her heels and waits.
"Can you not sleep, Koko?" Vamola says carefully. This strange expression, pinched yet compassionate, contorts her features.
She shakes her head, "It's not that. I just miss home is all."
"Oh, Koko." Vamola breathes.
They do not call Mom. Moko gets a cup of water and she carries it up stairs while Vamola follows behind. The water is set on the cabinet on the side of her futon. Vamola tucks her in cozily. She does not make to leave, once that is done, nor does she speak. She simply sits beside the futon with her knees on the hard floor and rests her hand on Moko's forehead. Then, she sings.
Moko's second favorite aunt does not sing like regular people do. She sings from deep within her chest and throat with vibrations thrumming in a continuous hum. Once this loop has been established her mouth moves in strange vocalizations that shapes the sound into a song.
The deep, mysterious melody is at once familiar and dreadful.
Moko slips into sleep and does not dream.