Guardian Angel

Stories

## Prologue

Such a pleasant feeling.

His body drifted lightly through the air.

There was no up or down, no left or right.

Like a balloon that had lost its air, he floated in a warm darkness.

This had to be a dream. It had been a long time since he had dreamed of flying.

Let me try turning a circle—

The thought had barely formed when his body began to tilt, slowly.

Beneath his feet the mountains drew gentle ridges, running on and on to the far side of the horizon.

The lower reaches of the night were a vivid green.

The treetops writhed in the wind like seaweed.

Countless stars glittered overhead, and a crescent moon cut from glass.

He had never imagined the night sky could blaze like this.

The stars flashed like jewels scattered across the ground, and a gray light filled the spaces between them.

He tried shifting a little through the air.

The stars streamed backward in silver lines. He felt no resistance from the air at all.

He remembered his left leg, the one that had always been hard to walk on, and could not help crying out in joy.

In a dream he could run as he pleased, and even fly.

He spiraled upward, straight toward the crescent moon and its cold light, then whipped around like a roller coaster and dove.

He glided through the summer night, and with his fingertips lightly touched the tips of the leaves that covered the mountainside.

Did the self in this dream have some kind of power?

All around him was pitch black. There was not even the beam of a flashlight.

Then who was it, flying, thinking, trembling in the air at this moment?

Sha, sha, sha.

The me who died—who, exactly, was “he”?

It was too dark to make out the man’s face, but his features……

## Recollection

It was dark here, warm, and thoroughly wet.

For an instant he felt afraid, worried this was a continuation of the dream before. But this place was different from that nightmare. It gave him a complete sense of safety. He lay curled, limbs drawn in, inside a space so narrow it nearly pressed against his body. It felt as if his whole body were bound tight in a thin, tough plastic membrane.

He opened his eyes and saw only a warm blackness with no sense of near or far. For some reason his mouth tasted salty. He moved the tip of his tongue and found there was not a single tooth in his gums. His mouth was full of lukewarm salt water. He slowly tasted this strange fragrance, then swallowed the salt water as a matter of course. When his lower abdomen began to swell, he urinated without the least restraint into the fluid in which he floated.

Then he realized with a start that he had not been breathing since he regained consciousness, and panic seized him. But he did not feel as if he were suffocating. His chest did not swell with breath. His lungs seemed filled with salt water. In his ears the vast rush of blood roared, and the sound made him feel at ease. Conversation from the outside world came faintly through several layers of membrane. A thin tube extending from his abdomen pulsed steadily, sending him nourishment and oxygen. No need to worry. This place was safe, unlike that nightmare—and, reassured, he slept.

Then, within a predetermined span of time, he was thrown like a pendulum into a future that had already become the past.

◎

When he woke again, the world around him was shaking violently.

A great change was about to begin. Flesh walls pressed in on him. The front of his left foot bent inward, and he felt a faint pain……

## Back to the Present

The night sky, a warm breeze, the crescent moon and the stars blazing so brightly he could not look straight at them.

Where was this?

Junichi could not feel the definite presence of a body the way he had before.

Slowly he turned a circle in the air.

Beneath his feet the mountains lay in layers, running all the way to the horizon. The green leaves of night surged in the wind like waves.

This was where the nightmare had begun.

He had returned to the starting point.

Why was I killed? Who killed me? By what means? None of it could be answered yet. He had hoped that the process of recollection would solve the riddle of his own death.

Junichi floated in the warm night sky, melancholy over the ending he had lost, and accepted beyond any doubt the fact that he was already dead. After living through the fragments of his life again, he understood one thing at last: his life had been dull and worthless. Probably no one would shed a tear over Junichi’s death. He had no family, no friends, no lover, not even a mistress bound to him by contract. He loved no one. He opened his heart to no one. Naturally, no one would weep for him.

Junichi did not think himself pitiable, nor did he think that if he could start over he would be able to choose a fuller life. The conclusion was simple—someone like him was better off dead. Junichi looked down on the forest at night. The cries of animals and insects were as noisy as rush hour. He would probably never again be able to touch that world that belonged to the living. Killing one another in order to survive, rankings and struggles for position without end—civilized human society was really no different……

## The Angel’s Attack

The new year had only just begun when a breaking news item caught Junichi’s attention.

He was in his apartment in the Tsukuda district, watching a late-night New Year’s program, when a line of news-ticker text suddenly appeared at the top of the screen:

Film director Kidosaki Tsuyoshi (67) hospitalized in an emergency.

Director Kidosaki is currently in production on a new period film, SODO—Turmoil.

Wanting more information, Junichi switched through the other channels, but aside from the station that had put up part of the production budget, not one of them mentioned Director Kidosaki Tsuyoshi’s emergency hospitalization. It was as if the news had no value at all.

Junichi teleported to the Kidosaki production company, thinking he might find the staff member in charge of communications. When he came to out of a blank consciousness, what met him was a montage of still photographs. Fumio was not at the reception desk. Kidosaki Watari’s hoarse voice came from the room inside.

“It shouldn’t be too serious. He’s in good spirits right now, even nagging us to move the equipment into the hospital room. The edit is already finished. Once the dubbing is done, the film will be complete. Before we let him rest properly, we at least have to get him to finish Turmoil, or we won’t be able to make any money.”

Producer Kidosaki put on a laugh with a blank face. Over his pajamas he wore a sweater, and over that a tracksuit jacket. He was alone in the room, wiping the sweat from his brow as he dealt with the phone.

“You want to send flowers? That’s really too kind of you…… St. Luke’s International Hospital in Akashi-cho, room 812……

## Epilogue

He woke.

The operating lamp above him blazed like a thousand suns,

almost scorching eyes and skin not yet used to light.

The first breath of outside air was terribly cold.

It invaded every corner of the windpipe and lungs still wet with amniotic fluid.

He had come back.

Back to this world where unease and pain exist forever.

Back to this world where the senses are stimulated far too strongly, and feeling is strangely dull.

He had come back.

For the rest of his life he would have to face the meaningless rankings of the world,

and the childish competition

that cannot be abandoned halfway.

He strained and puffed out his tiny chest.

To offer this world his first greeting,

he trembled all over and cried at the top of his voice.