Odonata

Nerima

The cold wind licked Akemi’s face as he stood outside, looking into the vastness of the city. He stood outside of Kubota hospital, leaning against a wall and kicking the snow. He was here for an hour and he already grew bored. Usually, his mom would take him down here on Sundays to visit his father. They would stay for an hour, talk idly about nothing, and go back to their apartment.

Akemi was worried because today was Thursday. As he stood outside, a red dragonfly flew up to him. He cautiously reached out his hand, expecting it to fly away. The dragonfly instead stepped onto his palm and seemed to be looking at him – contemplating him. Did this dragonfly have thoughts, Akemi thought. Later on, he would wonder if it remembered him like he remembered it.

His mother stepped outside and put a hand on his shoulder. This always meant that it was time to return to their apartment.

A large piano stood in the apartment’s center room. He didn’t have memories of it getting in, but they were on the sixth floor, so he imagined it must have been a hassle. One wrong move, and hundreds upon thousands of yen would go down the drain. Akemi imagined the piano creaking and making horrific noises as they dragged it up the six flights of stairs, always centimeters away from demise.

The sounds of the piano filled the apartment in the afternoons. Akemi knew his mother liked the piano, but he now realized she needed it. It anchored her in the wake of the final event of that horrible day. It was up to Akemi – and the piano – to keep his mother sane.

Chiba

The air in Akemi’s house was cold and vapid. He moved away the covers – which seemed to almost stick to his skin – and made his way to the repetitive ringing of the phone on his wall. The phone was a bright red, like one from a movie. He lifted the receiver to his ear to hear ringing, as if the line were dead. When he was about to put the receiver back, his eyes found the carved cuckoo clock that his mom brought over from Nerima. Who had tried to call him at 2:00 am? Maybe nobody. He was tired, that’s what this was.

He made his way back to his bedroom. He exited the living room – it was full of trash and needed cleaned. He passed the kitchen, the fridge covered in unpaid phone bills and invitations to things Akemi would never attend – weddings, funerals, class reunions. Most of these invitations were meant for his mother, not him. The stairs creaked when he walked up them, and the handrail was almost falling off the wall. As he walked down the narrow hallway to his room at the end, he stopped in front of a dusty room full of papers and books.

Even as he entered the room, he sneezed. He saw the mass in the corner of the room. It stood there, daunting in its presence. It had to be huge, impossible to get up their narrow set of stairs. It wasn’t something he hadn’t seen before, but here in the low moonlight filtering in from a crack in the window, the object seemed cold and eerie. Akemi moved the papers and sheet from the object to reveal his mother’s beloved piano, covered in dust.

His mother had taught him how to play Janacek’s In the Mists when he was younger. It wasn’t a simple piece to play by any means, but she made him practice it day in and day out with her. From the second he got home from school until dinner, he would be on the keys accompanied by her either standing over him, playing with him, or simply being with him. When he did learn the full piece, back to forth, she simply thanked him. She never touched the piano again after that. The sheet went on, and it stayed there for years.

Akemi found himself playing Janacek now, almost reflexively. The piano needed tuned, so all of the notes came out flat, but this didn’t stop the song from coming through. As he played, he looked at the fine details of this dusty room. His mother had thrown tons of papers in here. Stacks of musical scores and research papers littered the ground. The thick carpet grew musty with age, and it was hard to even find amidst all of the papers and books. On the window, he saw something red catch his eye. He stopped playing when he realized what it was.

The dragonfly made eye contact with Akemi as best it could before turning and flying away. Just as Akemi was about to retire to his room, the phone rung again. This time, there was a voice. Tengo, Akemi’s best childhood friend, was on the other end.

Tengo seemed oddly distant in their short conversation. He hadn’t spoken to Tengo since they moved out of Nerima, and he’d expected a long conversation when he heard Tengo’s voice. Instead, Tengo said that he had a spot with the Tokyo Music competition that needed filled. The competition was in Taito, and he asked if Akemi would compete in the piano section. This raised some difficult questions, however. He hadn’t spoken to Tengo in years, so how did he get their number in Chiba? Had he heard Akemi playing and immediately called? Where was Akemi’s mother, and how long had she been gone?

Akemi’s memory continually failed him.

Taito

On a Saturday at noon, Akemi found himself at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, a large orchestra hall. He was walking down a short hallway with sanitarium white walls. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with dress shoes – oxfords. He walked down the hall and saw other contestants as he strolled down uneasily. He saw pianists practicing in the air – Akemi didn’t consider himself a pianist – and violinists practicing vibrato. This hallway was crowded and almost seemed to get narrower and narrower as he neared the exit. He began to grow dizzy as he entered onto the large stage housing his mother’s grand piano, and the claustrophobia immediately dispelled.

Akemi had no idea how he got here. He only knew he was supposed to play.

He moved out to center stage. He was nervous and the questions began to flutter in his mind once more. As he looked out in the crowd, he saw what appeared to be a red dragonfly roosting on an audience member’s head. The audience members – they were nondescript people, all of them. They were the kind of people that you would see in the street and forget about two seconds later. Akemi found it difficult to focus on any one of them in particular.

He moved to the piano, his mother’s, and sat down. It was impeccably clean with all the dust and papers gone. However, it still retained the chips in the paint that he’d always assumed came from moving it up six flights.

Akemi began playing Janacek’s In the Mists. As he began, he became almost fully engrossed in the music. The chord changes and elegant melodies were taking the forefront in his mind. He began to think of his mother, whom he had not seen in… he still couldn’t remember. Learning this complicated piece night in and night out with her became a staple memory of his childhood. The warmth that accompanied this song for him took hold as his emotions welled up, fluctuated, and waned with the music’s tempo. Measure upon measure he slammed down the keys almost too hard to bear. Some sort of powerful emotion was trying to escape, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what. Was his life doomed to forever be a group of disconnected unknowns, or could he fix things? Maybe he could. Yes, he felt hope rise within him from no particular origin. As the song’s tempo increased, so did the force with which he played. Louder and louder the notes grew until he looked up once more.

The audience members were no longer there. He would be alone if it weren’t for the swarm of red dragonflies swirling over the orchestra seats. They danced in the air and seemed to chase each other like ouroboros. He noticed, too, that they sped up and slowed down with the music’s tempo he created. Since the audience was gone, he played for them. They danced vertically as he leapt from note to note across the keys. They knew so much more about him than he himself did. Akemi could feel that he needed to keep playing, no matter what was happening around him.

The stage now resembled utter darkness in all directions, he couldn’t see the ceiling, seats, or even the walls. He was playing in some sort of void, with one beam of light over himself and his mother’s piano. The only constant was the swirling mass of red dragonflies that now danced around him as the planets do the sun. He was reaching the end of the piece. It was fast and agile, and so too were they. They danced as fast as he played, and now resembled a wall of red movement – a blur. They settled on the piano’s top as he reached the final note, completely covering it just as the papers once did.

As the final note rang out, the dragonflies moved apart to reveal what looked like a notebook. Akemi thought he might have seen one like it in the piano room back in Chiba. However, this book had his name on the cover. They were his memories. The gaps in his knowledge of his own life were in that book.

Akemi Yamada – Shadow

A young Akemi sat on the couch of the apartment in Nerima. He was surrounded by moving boxes, slowly being packed, as his mother sat next to him. She assured him that he will have just as many friends in Chiba, and Tengo can come visit them. After all, it’s only the other side of the city.

Tengo and Akemi would not speak again.

The ride over felt like a haze lifted from the fog, and Akemi could barely make sense of it. When they arrived at the house, he’d seen movers disassembling his mother’s piano in what he assumed was their front yard. The house had an overwhelming sense of dread about it, but Akemi couldn’t tell why. It was as if he was the smallest creature in the world, and the house was a goliath towering over him. The shadows it cast were daunting.

Akemi was coming home from high school one day when the house was particularly oppressive. He barely found the strength to open the door, and when he did something was amiss. It took him a while to figure out what was wrong, so he paced up and down the living room. He rushed to the phone when he finally realized what it was. His mother was late getting home. He called her office, but they said she’d already left. Distraught now, Akemi went to the fridge to get the number of his mother’s car phone, which wouldn’t pick up.

Aimless he sat, awaiting his mother in their living room for hours before somebody knocked on the door. A police officer began relaying details to him about something that had happened to his mother, but he could barely keep the words in. His mind grew so fuzzy as to blot out the description that the officer gave. All he could make out when the officer left was that his mother was involved in a car crash. She wouldn’t be coming home.

Akemi’s life became monotonous and stale. Each day bled into the next like watercolor paint. For the longest time, he was without direction or any sense of insurance. He would eventually stop going to his job at the factory, and money began to run tight. He simply couldn’t find the motivation to do anything not absolutely required of him.

One day, however, Akemi rediscovered his mother’s piano in that dust-covered room. He played In the Mists for hours every day to feel closer to his mother. On one such day, Akemi was playing Janacek when he was interrupted by a loud pounding from downstairs. Uncertain, still crushed by the weight of the house, he slowly descended the narrow stairway.

Akemi Yamada – Light

He saw the copper green of his door almost shake each time it was hit. Cautiously opening the door, Akemi was greeted by a small woman about his age. She was holding out sheet music. She instructed Akemi in a vibrant voice to never play that piece again – it is unclear if she knew the name of In the Mists. Before Akemi could apologize, she thrust the sheet music into his hands, instructing him to instead learn and play that.

The piece was by Chopin, and it was complicated. It said in bold letters on the top Sonata No.3 in B Minor, Op.58. It was far more complicated than In the Mists.

For several weeks, Akemi was a hermit and recluse tied intrinsically to what was now referred to as the piano room – although it was still covered in dust – and that piece. The tempo swung back and forth with no recourse or need for action. It was fast, complicated, and challenged Akemi. It was everything that Janacek was, but more.

Akemi had found out that the girl was his neighbor, and the two became fast friends. Withdrawn as Akemi was, he enjoyed spending time with this girl, Taeko. She would bring him new piano pieces when he finished the previous, and he’d play them. She was also the one to encourage him to join in competitions.

The competitions he attended were grand and although he never won first place, he usually nabbed third at least. The feelings of joy that he got from playing the piano may stem from a sort of relief born from tragedy, but Akemi didn’t care about that. He enjoyed the piano and made enough from sparse competitions to afford food. This was a happy time in Akemi’s life.

Akemi Yamada – Shadow (Continued)

It wasn’t long after he gained a moderate amount of success before it became necessary for Akemi to stop. During a performance, he’d collapsed on the keys. He wasn’t exhausted or dehydrated, and yet he’d collapsed. In Kubota hospital, Akemi was told that he had an unknown illness.

Akemi had been bedridden for a few months now. They sent a nurse, Yato, to his house once a week. Yato administered drugs and pain medication to Akemi through an IV that followed him like a ghost. Other than Yato – who, again, only came once a week – Taeko helped Akemi do all of the things that he’d once done himself. Even such elementary tasks as getting dressed couldn’t be performed alone.

Many pitied Akemi’s conditions, giving their condolences whenever near him. Akemi wasn’t sure why. The way he saw it, he had lived a full life. He would most likely die of this mysterious illness that killed his father all those years ago. But Akemi was not sad about this. His life was one full of tragedy, sure, but he had people that he cared for. He had people that cared for him. No matter how he left this world, he would know that he left it better than he found it. Akemi was still happy.

One night Akemi woke to cold and vapid air. He got out of bed, standing alone for the first time in months, and the covers almost seemed to stick to his skin. He moved slowly down his narrow stairs to the repetitive ringing of the phone on his wall. He picked up the phone to hear a dead line. Disheartened, but oddly energized, he moved back up the narrow steps of that daunting house. As he moved his way painstakingly up the ascent, he felt the piano room calling to him.

The room was still dusty after all this time. He sat down at his mother’s piano and began to play Janacek’s In the Mists as he had before. He thought of the thousand times he’d played this piece throughout his life. Both with his mother, and without. Through the key and tempo changes, he thought of Tengo, Taeko, and even Yato. All of these people meant something to Akemi. Akemi meant something to all of these people, too. As he neared the end of the piece, he saw a red dragonfly sitting on the open window, listening. Akemi went to sleep one last time.

Taito (Continued)

Akemi set the book down on the piano. He was in awe and shock at what he’d remembered. He lived a full life. Now that he remembered it, he realized what had happened. Akemi died on that piano. He stood up from his mother’s piano, and the red dragonflies swarmed over him once more. They flew to the other side of the room, the double doors of the orchestra hall bursting open as the seats and stage revealed themselves once more. Through the doors, all Akemi could see was bright, white light. He knew what this was immediately, and he knew it would be pointless to fight it. He didn’t want to fight this. Given everything he’d been through – the bad, the good, and a lot of in between – he was content with the life he led.

Akemi walked into the warm light. He was happy.

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