Lady Joker, Volume 1 by Kaoru Takamura (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📕

yet again from the depths of the mud, all at once Shiroyama saw a dark blood-red stain before his eyes. The pool of red caught fire as it seeped into the mud, and just as it transformed into a fetid, roaring flame, an ear-splitting clatter erupted. He heard the wail of a fire bomb as it cut through the sky, and countless cries mingled with the sound of sirens, signal bells, and the bellowing of the volunteer guards.

You two over there! Who do you belong to? Where are your parents? What are you doing? Why haven’t you evacuated to the shelter yet?

My sister and I, we’re from the Shiroyama Clinic in Shinagawa. Our parents are at the clinic.

Shinagawa is burning! Hurry up and take shelter. Someone, take these children with you!

You two, you’ve lost your parents? Come with us aunties—quick, get going!

Mister, do you know the Shiroyama Clinic by the west exit of Shinagawa Station? My sister and I, our parents run the Shiroyama Clinic. Please, does anybody know the Shiroyama Clinic in Shinagawa?

Who do these two belong to? Has anyone seen their parents?

How old are you two? Eight and four? If you’re from a family of doctors, then you must have had plenty to eat. I’m sorry, I don’t have enough hot water for your little sister.

My sister is fine, thank you.

In his dream, Shiroyama felt a chafing thirst. His eight-year-old self stared resentfully at the bottle that a lady he did not know was giving to an infant in her arms, as he crouched next to his younger sister, who would not stop crying, and placed a hand over her mouth. Nevertheless, the eight-year-old Kyosuke did not look all that frightened, and since he was warmly bundled in a jacket of fine woolen cloth, he was in no danger of being cold, nor was he hungry either. His younger sister, Haruko, still so little, did nothing but cry, but Kyosuke had a tacit understanding of why their physician father and mother worked so tirelessly day and night tending to patients. His mother occasionally returned to their home in Sanno Ni-chome to hide special procurement cans of food and dried biscuits in the deep recesses of the kitchen cabinet with strict instructions—“Never tell the neighbors about them”—and he knew to take them out and eat them whenever he and his sister were hungry, and then to dispose of them by crushing the empty cans and burying them in a corner of the yard. He wanted to share the food with his neighborhood friends, but he also had the presence of mind to know not to because once he did, that would be the end. Other things he must have known were that enemy planes targeting the switchyard were closing in on the area around Shinagawa Station where his parents’ clinic was located; that sooner or later the clinic would be burned to the ground; that his mother and father would probably die—and the face of the child who Shiroyama saw now in his dream-like trance wore grown-up expressions of those who understood such logic all too well.

As he listened to the rumbling of the fire bombs in a corner of the air-raid shelter, his eight-year-old mind continued to wonder. If their parents were to die, he and his sister would be taken into an orphanage. There they would be under the watchful eye of a terrifying custodian, their every move scrutinized, forced to sleep in a dirty bed, slapped if they cried, or beaten if they failed to respond quickly enough. He could get by without books or toys, but he could not stand being hit, so perhaps it would be better to run away and live on the streets. If it came to that, he would take the books and kimonos from his parents’ home and sell them.

Shiroyama strained his ears against the exhaustive ruminations of his eight-year-old self and peered at his obstinate, peculiarly sangfroid expression, he sank yet again into the bottomless mud, thrust down by a mass of bitter confusion.

When he regained consciousness, at first Shiroyama writhed against the dull pain that permeated every inch of his body, but his heart lurched as he realized that he could not move his arms or legs, the blood rippling through every vessel in his head. He had no sense of which way was forward or back, nor any means of determining that, which sent him into a panic. For a few seconds, perhaps longer, he screamed at the furious beating of his heart and the throbbing in his head. In reality he was unable to make a sound, but the howling of his every muscle and cell created a vibration and his whole body trembled.

Then, just when it seemed that silence had abruptly returned, he was besieged by an astonishing thought—I am going to die. Shrouded by an otherworldly chill, he remembered how, long ago, the same sensation had always engulfed him in the midst of the air raids. Deranged and confused, the thought repeated itself—I am going to die—and his entire body seized up, this time by a strangely cold terror and grief. Death was something that appeared as a sudden shock, and if there was even the slightest delay in its onset, terror arrived in its stead, and with even more time to spare, a deep grief soon followed. I see, so this is what it feels like to die.

From a vast reservoir of sorrows—each one formless and indistinguishable—Shiroyama tried urgently to single out something recognizable before losing all hope, and he wept bitterly. The faces of his children, Mitsuaki and Shoko, from when they were young and from when they were grown up jumbled together in his mind. Meanwhile he could not even remember now what his wife of many years had looked like that morning as he left the house—the only image he could manage to reel in was a blurry face from who knew which era in his