Aokigahara (D.O focus) (3/4)
part one part two
・
The only reasonable thing for Kyungsoo to do is scream, so he does. He screams and yells and hollers for help, in Japanese, Korean, and in English. He screams expletives and nonsense, and his voice goes up an octave, but Kyungsoo doesn’t care, he just wants someone to hear him, anyone. His outbursts have startled a lark from its nest, and a few other birds scatter to the air in fear, and Kyungsoo continues to scream until every emotion has eased from his body and his throat is raw and he can’t scream anymore, but minutes pass and no one comes. The buzzing of the horse flies gets louder and fly erratically towards Kyungsoo’s face, but he swats them away. He breathes raggedly and his eyes dart from body to body.
Okay, calm down, Kyungsoo breathes slowly. This is all just a dream. Snap out of it. Kyungsoo closes his eyes and slowly counts to ten, and when he does open his eyes, maybe he’s just smelling the carcass of a deer. He’s just hallucinating, right? After counting to ten, Kyungsoo opens his eyes and almost screams again when it is still five bodies laying there. Kyungsoo drops to his knees, shaking and he doesn’t want to look at them, but he can’t look away. Two of the victims were foreigners, with dirty blonde hair and prominent noses, Kyungsoo suspects they are related. Their lips are blue and skin waxen, and right at their temples are small bullet holes, with dried blood blackening around the edges. The other two were Japanese, male and female, with candy wrappers littered around their feet. The female shot herself in the chest, her left hand across her breast, still firmly holding onto her pistol. Her male counterpart shot himself in the head, like the foreigners. The female died with her eyes open, and Kyungsoo watches in horror as a beetle scurries over her eyes.
A myriad of questions run through Kyungsoo’s mind. Why did they do this? Didn’t Ryohei say he was concerned about Kyungsoo’s life? Why kill themselves? Why kill themselves all at once? What drove them to do this? Why did the park rangers spot the man hanging himself, but not this? Did they not hear the gunshots? Kyungsoo’s eyes widen when he realizes; yesterday it rained heavily, with occasional thunder in the distance.
Did he hear their gunshots, and mistook it for thunder? Kyungsoo’s heart races as guilt, sorrow, and horror washes over him in rapid succession. I need to remain calm, he thinks. He opens his mouth and musters up the strength to let out a booming shout. It echoes, but no one answers.
Kyungsoo gets up to his feet and inches back towards the headless body. The body was male, fairly tall, and wore what was once a green and white coat. A shotgun lay across the chest, with the fingers resting on the trigger and the the shells in the body’s lap. The pants were damp, with insects crawling out of the pants’ leg. Doubtful optimism clouds Kyungsoo’s mind, but he needs it. Maybe it isn’t Ryohei. He doesn’t remember the faces of the foreigners, or if there was a female in their group, but white and green coats are pretty common. Maybe it’s another group. It can’t be Ryohei, it just can’t. Kyungsoo is way above searching bodies (and he hoped he would never have to) but he has to find identification. He gingerly tries to move the body’s arms, but rigor mortis has set in. Its wallet is not in the front pockets, and Kyungsoo nearly heaves right there when rolls the body to the side- human waste and fluids are what greet him- and digs through the body’s back pocket, but he finds it. Laying the body back down, Kyungsoo opens the wallet. There are several Yen banknotes, a few 500 ¥ coins, and several receipts from convenience stores. The ID is in its own special pocket, and yet though it’s been smudged by the seeping waste and rainwater, Kyungsoo can read the name and can see the face on the ID. It is indeed Ryohei, Maeda Ryohei, born in 1978.
Kyungsoo screams again, this time so loud it almost feels as if his vocal cords are about to strain and pop in his throat. The scream is swallowed by the trees, and aside from the buzzing of the flies, it is silent.
Kyungsoo drops the wallet and stands up, lurches, and then finally heaves. Saliva drips out of his mouth and whatever remnants of food he had last night struggle to come out, and he falls to the ground coughing and retching. The smells intoxicate him and his eyes sting with tears, but he spits and wipes his hands on pants and goes to look for the IDs of the other victims. In a few minutes, after enduring the stench and the bugs, Kyungsoo finally has them all. Ochi Ryunosuke, Hamada Eri, and twins from Canada, Richard and Gregory Wickle. All were in their mid twenties, the female Kyungsoo’s age, and probably had everything going for them.
“Why did you guys do it?” Kyungsoo whispers to them. He can’t leave them, but he needs to go and find help. Not knowing any emergency numbers, Kyungsoo takes off his jacket and rips a strip of cloth from his shirt, tying it around a nearby tree, so that maybe someone would know, if anyone were to come. He puts his jacket and backpack back on, stares wistfully at the bodies for a few moments, and trudges on.
・
“I need to get out of here.” Kyungsoo has walked in a straight line for two hours, and still hasn’t seen a trail or any sign of Lake Saiko. Kyungsoo clearly underestimated the scale of the forest. He stops to catch his breath, and smells his body odor when he finally comes to. His pants are streaked with Ryohei’s blood, and his shirt is soaked with sweat. Kyungsoo takes off his backpack and digs through it, finding his spare clothes. Kyungsoo rather he find someplace to wash his body off, but being lost and dripping in sweat and someone else’s blood, he has no choice but to suck it up. After changing and rolling up his soiled clothes in his backpack, Kyungsoo continues on despite his knees threatening to give out and his heart feeling as if it’s going to sink to the bottom of his stomach, Kyungsoo presses on for another hour until his body screams in exhaustion. He finds a stump to sit on, nearly folding himself as he rests his head in his lap. The silence circles around him and he finally breaks down, crying into his lap, shoulders shaking. He cries for the hand, for the bloated body that fell on his tent, for Eri, Ryunosuke, Gregory, Richard, and Ryohei. He cries for them and the countless other people who came here to end their lives. “I’m so sorry,” he sobs. “I’m so sorry.” What he’s sorry for, he doesn’t know.
It feels like he’s been crying for hours, and the sunlight is dissipating. The forest grows darker and though the place is filled with rocks and trees, Kyungsoo doesn’t have it in him to go anywhere else right now. Calming down, he takes out his tent and tries to work with the mangled rods, and after several minutes, Kyungsoo gives up trying to make the tent stand in its original form, so he just stands the nylon covering with two of the tent’s longest rods, and the result is the tent is a half its height, but still enough where Kyungsoo can lay down and sleep in it protected from the elements. Make do with what you have, is what his mother has told him many times when he was young. Climbing in the tent, fatigue washes over him, and forgoing any food, Kyungsoo barely has enough strength to pull out his blanket before closing his eyes; his last thoughts are about the couple in his story, the female walking around their campsite, counting the skulls, and calling out “Younghae! When is dinner ready?”
---
Later that night, the couple makes love in their tent. It is their first time, despite being together for several months, and the female figures that if they are going to die soon, they want to have at least been together, known their bodies for the first and final time. The male has never had sex before, and throughout it he’s worried if he finishes too early, or if his out-of-shape and flabby body repulses the woman beneath him. It’s dark, and he can only hear the woman hiss as he enters her, and stifle her moans as he thrusts shallowly. He can feel her blunt nails lightly scratch his arms, her wet kisses been pressed against his shoulder, and the softness of her hair when his hand attempts to stroke her face. But when she wraps her legs around him, the male freezes up and pulls out, scrambling to get out the tent and get fresh air.
He takes several giant gulps of air, shuddering as the cool wind ghosts against his skin, and the leaves and weeds scratching his palms and knees. He he hears the woman slowly follow him out of the tent, and almost jumps out of his skin when she rubs his back soothingly.
“Is everything okay?” She asks.
“It is my first time,” he admitted. “And I don’t.... I don’t want to disappoint you.” He chances to look at her, her body dimly lit by the moonlight, her small breasts pointing upwards slightly.
“You’re not. Come back inside.”
It is a stupid question, but he has to ask. “Why do you want to die?” He blurts out. He can feel her sad gaze on him, but he doesn’t look at her. “I know you’ve worked dead-end jobs all your life, but you’ve never really told me why you want to die. You’ve seen rather optimal to me.” He looks at her, and she’s looking up at the moon.
She shrugs. “Because when you told me that you planned on killing yourself, I didn’t want you to do it alone.” She replies. “I don’t suppose talking you out of suicide would be fruitful, and despite my optimism, I’ve been thinking about dying too.” She crushes a dried leaf in her palm, and wipes the remnants away. “Sometimes, most of the time, people don’t have a reason for killing themselves, don’t they? They just do it.”
“You’re killing yourself, because of me?”
“I don’t want you to be alone, is all.” The woman turns away to go back in the tent.
“Come back inside,” she says again over her shoulder, settling back into the tent, and the man slowly follows after her.
---
It is Kyungsoo’s stomach that wakes him up. It rumbles and gurgles in protest so much that he weakly props himself up on his elbows. It is very late, Kyungsoo knows as much. The silence of the forest is penetrated by the sound of crickets, and occasional rustle of leaves. The fog of sleep is still heavy around him, but his hunger is greater than his exhaustion. He makes a move to get his flashlight to fish out his electric burner; he could go for ramyun right now. It’s too late to set up the electric burner carefully in case it tips and a spark catches and sets the ground aflame, but Kyungsoo doesn’t care; let the leaves and the trees catch fire, maybe someone will see the smoke and the flames and he’ll most likely be caught and arrested and heavily fined for trying to bring the whole forest down, but if that means someone finding him, he’s all for it. But right as he switches on his flashlight, something outside rustles in the leaves. Kyungsoo freezes, as it happens again. It’s too large to be a fox or a deer.
Is it- is it a human? Kyungsoo’s voice struggles to speak. “H-hello?” He calls out softly.
And then suddenly his tent shakes violently. Kyungsoo yells and drops his flashlight, the beam of light casting off the walls of the tent. Kyungsoo can see dozens of hands leaving faint impressions on the nylon, pushing it and trying to toss it around, but despite the number of hands they’re too weak to lift it.
Horrified, Kyungsoo scrambles to open the tent door, screaming and yelling and waving his arm wildly, ready to fight off whatever is there. When he opens it though, the shaking stops, and when he steps out, it is just him and the silence of the forest. Even the crickets have stopped.
My mind is playing tricks on me, Kyungsoo concludes after a moment, but even then he’s still filled with doubt. It felt so real, the shaking of his tent, the hands. Perhaps his hunger was so great, and the shock of stumbling upon so much death is doing serious damage to his mind. Kyungsoo stands there, casting his flashlight into the darkness. Everything looks normal, the trees and the stones, no signs of anyone else.
A twig snaps and Kyungsoo whips his head to the right. His flashlight doesn’t shine in the direction of his head, so it’s dark, but despite the pitch blackness of the forest, he can see. Despite the pale, chalky skin clinging to the bones, the wide, unblinking stare from his giant black eyes, and the almost transparency figure, Kyungsoo doesn’t need to think who this is.
“Ryohei?” Kyungsoo’s whisper sounds so shrill in his ears, and he realizes he’s been holding in his breath. The Ryohei figure doesn’t move, but Kyungsoo is too afraid to move towards him. He finally shines his flashlight towards Ryohei, and all the color drains from his face as he watches the beam of light shine right through the legs. Kyungsoo looks at the apparition straight in the eyes. Ryohei doesn’t blink.
Kyungsoo breathes. “Ryohei,” he says quietly.
The Ryohei spirit suddenly makes a move, and it glides, and Kyungsoo has never hurried back into his tent so fast in his entire life. He clings to his flashlight for dear life, silently praying for the day to come.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
・
Morning is misty and overcast and dismal as Kyungsoo feels. The colors of the forest are muted, as if someone came and painted a thin coat of gray all over the forest. Hunger rips at his insides and Kyungsoo scrambles to set up his electric burner. He has the pot of water ready, and he already scarfed the rest of the bread, as well as the cereal, and Kyungsoo breaks the ramyun noodle squares as he waits for the water to boil. Minutes pass and not even a bubble surfaces up from the water, and the welcoming sight of boiling water Kyungsoo hoped for doesn’t come.
“What?” Kyungsoo flips with the switch, checks the batteries. This thing was supposed to work for a month on battery life, and Kyungsoo has always diligently turned it off to conserve its power.
“Come on, damn it,” Kyungsoo flips the on switch several times, the sound of muted clicking is all that he hears. He curses under his breath, as his stomach still gurgles and he still feels faint from hunger. Putting his burner away, he looks at the packet of ramyun already open. Ramyun is still ramyun, even if it’s uncooked, right? Kyungsoo takes a square of dried noodles, and gnaws at it. It’s bland, rough, and he chews for minutes as the noodles crunch against his teeth. He opens the seasoning packet and almost chokes when he pours the seasoning on his tongue and some particles travel to his nose. It takes him ten minutes to eat half of a square, but Kyungsoo realizes that uncooked ramyun is filling, because he’s not hungry anymore. He drinks the water from the pot; room temperature but it feels so good against his parched throat. Putting his things away, Kyungsoo stands up and stretches. Last night had to be his mind playing tricks on him, because to him, spirits don’t exist. Ryohei’s head has basically exploded off. He’s gone, he’s done, he’s finished.
But it felt so real. He woke up this morning with his flashlight clutched into his hands, knuckles white and skin taut. He was visibly shaking and it’s a wonder how he didn’t soil himself in his sleep. This whole forest is turning against me, he thinks, looking at the spot where the Ryohei stood last night. Where is he? Mochizuki told him that the trail was not far away. Is he going the wrong way? Kyungsoo sits back down, and concludes that he is indeed lost. One of the tips he learned is that, if you are lost, stay put. Someone will eventually find you. How long is eventually? Kyungsoo gnaws at another block of noodles when his stomach growls again. Times passes slowly and he fills it by writing, writing dialogue and imagery, but the beauty in the trees have waned, their never ending expanse discouraging him. In ten minute increments he looks up to the space where Ryohei stood, thinking that maybe Ryohei would return or someone else would find him. No one comes. Maybe tomorrow they will, Kyungsoo thinks, but it’s not convincing him, and after only writing a paragraph, he puts his pad away and hides out in his tent until night comes.
---
It isn’t even half past nine yet when the woman says to the man, that it’s time. She picked over her breakfast, before giving it to the man to finish. The man stares at the cross he stuck in the ground a few nights before, almost wanting to back out. Why does she want to die in this way? Can’t she opt for another way?
“Are you sure?” He insists. You don’t want to wait another day? Or.... you know, do it another way?”
The woman chuckles. “Are you scared to do it?” She asks. “I told you, when I die, I want to die with a big statement. This is what I’ve been thinking about for the past few years. You promised,” she reaches over to put her hand over his. “To do this for me. It’s all I ask.”
The man lets out a shuddering breath. “I know,” he replies. “But I.... I don’t know. It’ll be incredibly painful-”
“I want pain. I’ve been in pain all my life and being in pain when I die isn’t going to make much difference.” The man still has his doubts. “Please,” the woman says, looking at him with her sad eyes, her soft smile not reaching them. The man sighs and steps out of the tent.
“Okay,” he agrees after a moment, his voice sounding far-away.
It takes them nearly twenty minutes, but the woman’s arms are strapped tightly to the sides of the cross, splayed out and wrists exposed. Her legs are too long for it, so she has to twist her lower body to the left and bend her knees until they are jutting out. The man ties her legs to the post and sits back.
“Nail me in,” she says finally, her breath controlled and face hardened. He looks at her, shaking his head.
“I don’t want to- tying you up is enough.”
“You promised,” she warns, her tone steely. She’s bracing herself for the pain that would come.
Reluctantly, the man shuffles back to the tent and opens his backpack. Taking out three horseshoe nails, nails as long as the length of his hand, and a hammer, he comes back out and sets two of the nails down. The woman looks at him for a moment, eyes blank and her jaw clenching. The man sits there on his knees, staring up at her, and she stares back, silently communicating for what feels like hours, but it’s only a few minutes.
“Okay,” she breathes. “I’m ready.”
Slowly the man takes the horseshoe nail and positions it near the woman’s right palm. The sharp tip grazes her skin and she tries to hide her shudder. He prepares the hammer, testing it to make sure the first strike will be true.
When the hammer slams against the flat end of the nail, a strangled scream escapes from the corner of the woman’s mouth. The man can hear the metal try to push through the sinews of muscle and tensile bone. Blood gushes past the nail as it breaks through the bone, and after one more strike of the hammer, the nail connects to the wooden post. The man looks up to the woman’s eyes, murmuring apologies. The woman shakes violently, tongue between her teeth as she tries not to scream. She breathes shallowly after a moment, then nods and struggles out a “the other hand now.” The man positions another nail, this time to the left, and strikes harder. The woman grunts hard and bites down on her tongue so hard blood spills from her mouth. She swallows a mouthful of blood and her nostrils flare, pupils dilating. The nail doesn’t take as long as to go through her hand, and the man reaches down to get the final nail to put through her feet-
“Don’t.” she gasps. “That’s enough.” She leans her head back against the wood. The man sits back on his haunches and stares at her, unsure of why he went through with this. But he can’t do anything now, it’s past undoing. He watches the blood drip down to the ground, spattering the leaves in crimson and staining the wood.
“Do you need anything?” The man breaks the silence. “Water? Medicine?” The woman shakes her head and closes her eyes. She hoped that the shock of having two nails driven into her hands would kill her instantly, or after a few hours, if not maybe after a few days of starvation and no water would do her in.
“I just want to get this over with,” she murmurs, tongue heavy and tender in her mouth.
---
Kyungsoo is roused from his sleep after his stomach rumbles. He doesn’t bother to fumble for his flashlight as he pokes his hand aimlessly through his backpack for another packet of ramyun. He tears through the plastic wrapping and gnaws on the whole ramyun block, finishing it in minutes. He doesn’t bother to throw away the wrapping and drifts off back to sleep, his last thoughts about naming the woman Hee Young, her name meaning eternal pleasure and prosperity.
・
It is not until Kyungsoo hastily packs up the next morning and heads northwest for an hour when he realizes he’s ran out of food. When he stops for a break, he rummages through his backpack for a bottle of water and another packet of ramyun noodles, but instead of feeling the noodles he feels the bottom of his backpack. Confused, he searches through it, looking under his soiled clothes and blankets, but finds nothing.
Worry clogs every nook and cranny in Kyungsoo’s mind. His body wants to increase his pace and maybe he’ll find the trail soon, and if he follows it he’ll find a rest stop, but his mind tells him that if he increases his pace, he’ll burn the food in his stomach faster and have no energy to go find help. He settles on walking, ignoring the way his stomach whines for more food. He’s even ran out of seasoning packets. He takes large gulps of water and banks right, heading where he believes is north. “I should’ve bought a map,” he mumbles to himself. “I should’ve bought more food. I should’ve called Ryohei. I should’ve followed Mochizuki when I had the chance.
“I shouldn't have come here.” His words are muffled by the trees, and he’s trapped in a sea of green and brown, no sign of the sky past the frail branches and endless leaves. Kyungsoo travels farther and then he can’t go on any further, his knees giving in and lays down on the ground, too exhausted to put up his tent.
・
Kyungsoo takes a swig of the last of his water when he wakes up. Cracks and spaces in the trees show the sky turning orange and pink. Kyungsoo is damp and itchy; a phantom insect crawls on his back and he does a half-hearted shake to get it off. Twigs and dirt collect in his hair, but he makes no move to remove them. He is too sleep and too tired to do anything about it, so he stays there on the ground, dreaming of home, his parents, his colleagues at the publishing office, Ryohei and his friends, and the trail.
“Get me out of here,” a sob escapes from his lips.
・
His flashlight dies out on him, and his phone has twelve percent of battery life left. Kyungsoo leaves it off and cries openly to make up for the stifling silence of the forest. Something breaks a twig behind him, but he doesn’t bother to check. He eventually falls asleep again, hearing the words “you should have called earlier”, but he assumes that’s just the wind.
・
Daylight hasn’t even begun, but Kyungsoo struggles to get up and heads further north. He swallows frequently to moisten the patch of dryness that forms in his throat. He stumbles into a tree and stands there for a few minutes before he realizes that he hasn’t moved yet. He trudges on, mind wandering off to anything and nothing. He trips on a small stone, but the feeling of the slippery stone against the sole of his boot is enough to make him collapse face-first into a pile of leaves. He dozes off, ignoring a beetle crawling the shell of his ear.
---
The midday mist slowly rolls in, clouding the ground in swirling gray haze. The man finishes cooking a pot of udon, his rope to hang himself by his side. Hee Young falls in and out of conscious, trying to die, but despite the pain and the methodical checking of her pulse, she’s still hanging on. She curses faintly, and the man wants to ask her to repeat it, but inside he doesn’t want her to waste her strength.
The smell of the broth boiling stirs Hee Young from her stupor. She groans, fingers twitching slightly. The man looks up at her, the dried blood stark against the pale wood.
“Couldn’t you have cooked that someplace else?” Hee Young’s voice is faint and raspy.
“I’m sorry,” the man feels guilty and almost thinks about knocking the pot of noodles to the ground, but it would be such a crime to waste all this food. He takes some steaming noodles out of the pot with a pair of chopsticks, blowing on them faintly, some of the aroma wafting towards Hee Young. She grunts in protest.
The man holds out the chopsticks to her. “Please eat.” He pleads. “You need to-”
“I’m trying to die here.” She throws a baleful look at him, as best as she could. “I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since I nailed you.” Hee Young swallows back a hoarse giggle.
“I’m not hungry.”
The man shakes the noodles in fervor. “I don’t care, I can’t watch you starve. Please, Hee Young, I need you to eat, if only a little.” Hee Young glares at him, but doesn’t tell the man to go away when he stands up and presses the limp noodles against her pursed lips. Hee Young looks at him with her sad eyes, and she groans as she finally parts her lips and lets the noodles be pushed into her mouth.
“Fuck you,” she says through a mouthful of food and an injured tongue.
“I love you too.” The man gets more noodles and continues to feed Hee Young.
---
Kyungsoo gets back up after an hour passed out on the ground. Something in him tells him, just a bit more, move your legs Kyungsoo, come on, just keep at it. He grabs at the nearest tree for support and forces himself to put one foot in front of the other. It is a slow and arduous process, but he keeps on and the trees are getting sparse in number. The green looks lush and vibrant, and sudden warmth creeps into his bones. Just a bit further, he tells himself; the warmth feels so welcoming, like a phantom hug. The forest begins to clear and past a few trees, a clearing that stretches past Kyungsoo’s peripheral vision, and he breaks into a jumbled half sprint, until a clear blue appears in the front of him and he breaks free, finally, from the thick of the forest.
He has found the trail, with Lake Saiko in the slight distance. The lake is a glittering deep blue with the morning sun’s light reflecting brightly off it’s calm surface. Not too far away from it is the beachfront of the Nemba lakeshore, and there are people in the distance. Tears trickle down Kyungsoo’s cheeks, and he sits down at the shore, the last thing he thinks is that this is the most beautiful sight in the world.
・
part four
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・
The only reasonable thing for Kyungsoo to do is scream, so he does. He screams and yells and hollers for help, in Japanese, Korean, and in English. He screams expletives and nonsense, and his voice goes up an octave, but Kyungsoo doesn’t care, he just wants someone to hear him, anyone. His outbursts have startled a lark from its nest, and a few other birds scatter to the air in fear, and Kyungsoo continues to scream until every emotion has eased from his body and his throat is raw and he can’t scream anymore, but minutes pass and no one comes. The buzzing of the horse flies gets louder and fly erratically towards Kyungsoo’s face, but he swats them away. He breathes raggedly and his eyes dart from body to body.
Okay, calm down, Kyungsoo breathes slowly. This is all just a dream. Snap out of it. Kyungsoo closes his eyes and slowly counts to ten, and when he does open his eyes, maybe he’s just smelling the carcass of a deer. He’s just hallucinating, right? After counting to ten, Kyungsoo opens his eyes and almost screams again when it is still five bodies laying there. Kyungsoo drops to his knees, shaking and he doesn’t want to look at them, but he can’t look away. Two of the victims were foreigners, with dirty blonde hair and prominent noses, Kyungsoo suspects they are related. Their lips are blue and skin waxen, and right at their temples are small bullet holes, with dried blood blackening around the edges. The other two were Japanese, male and female, with candy wrappers littered around their feet. The female shot herself in the chest, her left hand across her breast, still firmly holding onto her pistol. Her male counterpart shot himself in the head, like the foreigners. The female died with her eyes open, and Kyungsoo watches in horror as a beetle scurries over her eyes.
A myriad of questions run through Kyungsoo’s mind. Why did they do this? Didn’t Ryohei say he was concerned about Kyungsoo’s life? Why kill themselves? Why kill themselves all at once? What drove them to do this? Why did the park rangers spot the man hanging himself, but not this? Did they not hear the gunshots? Kyungsoo’s eyes widen when he realizes; yesterday it rained heavily, with occasional thunder in the distance.
Did he hear their gunshots, and mistook it for thunder? Kyungsoo’s heart races as guilt, sorrow, and horror washes over him in rapid succession. I need to remain calm, he thinks. He opens his mouth and musters up the strength to let out a booming shout. It echoes, but no one answers.
Kyungsoo gets up to his feet and inches back towards the headless body. The body was male, fairly tall, and wore what was once a green and white coat. A shotgun lay across the chest, with the fingers resting on the trigger and the the shells in the body’s lap. The pants were damp, with insects crawling out of the pants’ leg. Doubtful optimism clouds Kyungsoo’s mind, but he needs it. Maybe it isn’t Ryohei. He doesn’t remember the faces of the foreigners, or if there was a female in their group, but white and green coats are pretty common. Maybe it’s another group. It can’t be Ryohei, it just can’t. Kyungsoo is way above searching bodies (and he hoped he would never have to) but he has to find identification. He gingerly tries to move the body’s arms, but rigor mortis has set in. Its wallet is not in the front pockets, and Kyungsoo nearly heaves right there when rolls the body to the side- human waste and fluids are what greet him- and digs through the body’s back pocket, but he finds it. Laying the body back down, Kyungsoo opens the wallet. There are several Yen banknotes, a few 500 ¥ coins, and several receipts from convenience stores. The ID is in its own special pocket, and yet though it’s been smudged by the seeping waste and rainwater, Kyungsoo can read the name and can see the face on the ID. It is indeed Ryohei, Maeda Ryohei, born in 1978.
Kyungsoo screams again, this time so loud it almost feels as if his vocal cords are about to strain and pop in his throat. The scream is swallowed by the trees, and aside from the buzzing of the flies, it is silent.
Kyungsoo drops the wallet and stands up, lurches, and then finally heaves. Saliva drips out of his mouth and whatever remnants of food he had last night struggle to come out, and he falls to the ground coughing and retching. The smells intoxicate him and his eyes sting with tears, but he spits and wipes his hands on pants and goes to look for the IDs of the other victims. In a few minutes, after enduring the stench and the bugs, Kyungsoo finally has them all. Ochi Ryunosuke, Hamada Eri, and twins from Canada, Richard and Gregory Wickle. All were in their mid twenties, the female Kyungsoo’s age, and probably had everything going for them.
“Why did you guys do it?” Kyungsoo whispers to them. He can’t leave them, but he needs to go and find help. Not knowing any emergency numbers, Kyungsoo takes off his jacket and rips a strip of cloth from his shirt, tying it around a nearby tree, so that maybe someone would know, if anyone were to come. He puts his jacket and backpack back on, stares wistfully at the bodies for a few moments, and trudges on.
・
“I need to get out of here.” Kyungsoo has walked in a straight line for two hours, and still hasn’t seen a trail or any sign of Lake Saiko. Kyungsoo clearly underestimated the scale of the forest. He stops to catch his breath, and smells his body odor when he finally comes to. His pants are streaked with Ryohei’s blood, and his shirt is soaked with sweat. Kyungsoo takes off his backpack and digs through it, finding his spare clothes. Kyungsoo rather he find someplace to wash his body off, but being lost and dripping in sweat and someone else’s blood, he has no choice but to suck it up. After changing and rolling up his soiled clothes in his backpack, Kyungsoo continues on despite his knees threatening to give out and his heart feeling as if it’s going to sink to the bottom of his stomach, Kyungsoo presses on for another hour until his body screams in exhaustion. He finds a stump to sit on, nearly folding himself as he rests his head in his lap. The silence circles around him and he finally breaks down, crying into his lap, shoulders shaking. He cries for the hand, for the bloated body that fell on his tent, for Eri, Ryunosuke, Gregory, Richard, and Ryohei. He cries for them and the countless other people who came here to end their lives. “I’m so sorry,” he sobs. “I’m so sorry.” What he’s sorry for, he doesn’t know.
It feels like he’s been crying for hours, and the sunlight is dissipating. The forest grows darker and though the place is filled with rocks and trees, Kyungsoo doesn’t have it in him to go anywhere else right now. Calming down, he takes out his tent and tries to work with the mangled rods, and after several minutes, Kyungsoo gives up trying to make the tent stand in its original form, so he just stands the nylon covering with two of the tent’s longest rods, and the result is the tent is a half its height, but still enough where Kyungsoo can lay down and sleep in it protected from the elements. Make do with what you have, is what his mother has told him many times when he was young. Climbing in the tent, fatigue washes over him, and forgoing any food, Kyungsoo barely has enough strength to pull out his blanket before closing his eyes; his last thoughts are about the couple in his story, the female walking around their campsite, counting the skulls, and calling out “Younghae! When is dinner ready?”
---
Later that night, the couple makes love in their tent. It is their first time, despite being together for several months, and the female figures that if they are going to die soon, they want to have at least been together, known their bodies for the first and final time. The male has never had sex before, and throughout it he’s worried if he finishes too early, or if his out-of-shape and flabby body repulses the woman beneath him. It’s dark, and he can only hear the woman hiss as he enters her, and stifle her moans as he thrusts shallowly. He can feel her blunt nails lightly scratch his arms, her wet kisses been pressed against his shoulder, and the softness of her hair when his hand attempts to stroke her face. But when she wraps her legs around him, the male freezes up and pulls out, scrambling to get out the tent and get fresh air.
He takes several giant gulps of air, shuddering as the cool wind ghosts against his skin, and the leaves and weeds scratching his palms and knees. He he hears the woman slowly follow him out of the tent, and almost jumps out of his skin when she rubs his back soothingly.
“Is everything okay?” She asks.
“It is my first time,” he admitted. “And I don’t.... I don’t want to disappoint you.” He chances to look at her, her body dimly lit by the moonlight, her small breasts pointing upwards slightly.
“You’re not. Come back inside.”
It is a stupid question, but he has to ask. “Why do you want to die?” He blurts out. He can feel her sad gaze on him, but he doesn’t look at her. “I know you’ve worked dead-end jobs all your life, but you’ve never really told me why you want to die. You’ve seen rather optimal to me.” He looks at her, and she’s looking up at the moon.
She shrugs. “Because when you told me that you planned on killing yourself, I didn’t want you to do it alone.” She replies. “I don’t suppose talking you out of suicide would be fruitful, and despite my optimism, I’ve been thinking about dying too.” She crushes a dried leaf in her palm, and wipes the remnants away. “Sometimes, most of the time, people don’t have a reason for killing themselves, don’t they? They just do it.”
“You’re killing yourself, because of me?”
“I don’t want you to be alone, is all.” The woman turns away to go back in the tent.
“Come back inside,” she says again over her shoulder, settling back into the tent, and the man slowly follows after her.
---
It is Kyungsoo’s stomach that wakes him up. It rumbles and gurgles in protest so much that he weakly props himself up on his elbows. It is very late, Kyungsoo knows as much. The silence of the forest is penetrated by the sound of crickets, and occasional rustle of leaves. The fog of sleep is still heavy around him, but his hunger is greater than his exhaustion. He makes a move to get his flashlight to fish out his electric burner; he could go for ramyun right now. It’s too late to set up the electric burner carefully in case it tips and a spark catches and sets the ground aflame, but Kyungsoo doesn’t care; let the leaves and the trees catch fire, maybe someone will see the smoke and the flames and he’ll most likely be caught and arrested and heavily fined for trying to bring the whole forest down, but if that means someone finding him, he’s all for it. But right as he switches on his flashlight, something outside rustles in the leaves. Kyungsoo freezes, as it happens again. It’s too large to be a fox or a deer.
Is it- is it a human? Kyungsoo’s voice struggles to speak. “H-hello?” He calls out softly.
And then suddenly his tent shakes violently. Kyungsoo yells and drops his flashlight, the beam of light casting off the walls of the tent. Kyungsoo can see dozens of hands leaving faint impressions on the nylon, pushing it and trying to toss it around, but despite the number of hands they’re too weak to lift it.
Horrified, Kyungsoo scrambles to open the tent door, screaming and yelling and waving his arm wildly, ready to fight off whatever is there. When he opens it though, the shaking stops, and when he steps out, it is just him and the silence of the forest. Even the crickets have stopped.
My mind is playing tricks on me, Kyungsoo concludes after a moment, but even then he’s still filled with doubt. It felt so real, the shaking of his tent, the hands. Perhaps his hunger was so great, and the shock of stumbling upon so much death is doing serious damage to his mind. Kyungsoo stands there, casting his flashlight into the darkness. Everything looks normal, the trees and the stones, no signs of anyone else.
A twig snaps and Kyungsoo whips his head to the right. His flashlight doesn’t shine in the direction of his head, so it’s dark, but despite the pitch blackness of the forest, he can see. Despite the pale, chalky skin clinging to the bones, the wide, unblinking stare from his giant black eyes, and the almost transparency figure, Kyungsoo doesn’t need to think who this is.
“Ryohei?” Kyungsoo’s whisper sounds so shrill in his ears, and he realizes he’s been holding in his breath. The Ryohei figure doesn’t move, but Kyungsoo is too afraid to move towards him. He finally shines his flashlight towards Ryohei, and all the color drains from his face as he watches the beam of light shine right through the legs. Kyungsoo looks at the apparition straight in the eyes. Ryohei doesn’t blink.
Kyungsoo breathes. “Ryohei,” he says quietly.
The Ryohei spirit suddenly makes a move, and it glides, and Kyungsoo has never hurried back into his tent so fast in his entire life. He clings to his flashlight for dear life, silently praying for the day to come.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep.
・
Morning is misty and overcast and dismal as Kyungsoo feels. The colors of the forest are muted, as if someone came and painted a thin coat of gray all over the forest. Hunger rips at his insides and Kyungsoo scrambles to set up his electric burner. He has the pot of water ready, and he already scarfed the rest of the bread, as well as the cereal, and Kyungsoo breaks the ramyun noodle squares as he waits for the water to boil. Minutes pass and not even a bubble surfaces up from the water, and the welcoming sight of boiling water Kyungsoo hoped for doesn’t come.
“What?” Kyungsoo flips with the switch, checks the batteries. This thing was supposed to work for a month on battery life, and Kyungsoo has always diligently turned it off to conserve its power.
“Come on, damn it,” Kyungsoo flips the on switch several times, the sound of muted clicking is all that he hears. He curses under his breath, as his stomach still gurgles and he still feels faint from hunger. Putting his burner away, he looks at the packet of ramyun already open. Ramyun is still ramyun, even if it’s uncooked, right? Kyungsoo takes a square of dried noodles, and gnaws at it. It’s bland, rough, and he chews for minutes as the noodles crunch against his teeth. He opens the seasoning packet and almost chokes when he pours the seasoning on his tongue and some particles travel to his nose. It takes him ten minutes to eat half of a square, but Kyungsoo realizes that uncooked ramyun is filling, because he’s not hungry anymore. He drinks the water from the pot; room temperature but it feels so good against his parched throat. Putting his things away, Kyungsoo stands up and stretches. Last night had to be his mind playing tricks on him, because to him, spirits don’t exist. Ryohei’s head has basically exploded off. He’s gone, he’s done, he’s finished.
But it felt so real. He woke up this morning with his flashlight clutched into his hands, knuckles white and skin taut. He was visibly shaking and it’s a wonder how he didn’t soil himself in his sleep. This whole forest is turning against me, he thinks, looking at the spot where the Ryohei stood last night. Where is he? Mochizuki told him that the trail was not far away. Is he going the wrong way? Kyungsoo sits back down, and concludes that he is indeed lost. One of the tips he learned is that, if you are lost, stay put. Someone will eventually find you. How long is eventually? Kyungsoo gnaws at another block of noodles when his stomach growls again. Times passes slowly and he fills it by writing, writing dialogue and imagery, but the beauty in the trees have waned, their never ending expanse discouraging him. In ten minute increments he looks up to the space where Ryohei stood, thinking that maybe Ryohei would return or someone else would find him. No one comes. Maybe tomorrow they will, Kyungsoo thinks, but it’s not convincing him, and after only writing a paragraph, he puts his pad away and hides out in his tent until night comes.
---
It isn’t even half past nine yet when the woman says to the man, that it’s time. She picked over her breakfast, before giving it to the man to finish. The man stares at the cross he stuck in the ground a few nights before, almost wanting to back out. Why does she want to die in this way? Can’t she opt for another way?
“Are you sure?” He insists. You don’t want to wait another day? Or.... you know, do it another way?”
The woman chuckles. “Are you scared to do it?” She asks. “I told you, when I die, I want to die with a big statement. This is what I’ve been thinking about for the past few years. You promised,” she reaches over to put her hand over his. “To do this for me. It’s all I ask.”
The man lets out a shuddering breath. “I know,” he replies. “But I.... I don’t know. It’ll be incredibly painful-”
“I want pain. I’ve been in pain all my life and being in pain when I die isn’t going to make much difference.” The man still has his doubts. “Please,” the woman says, looking at him with her sad eyes, her soft smile not reaching them. The man sighs and steps out of the tent.
“Okay,” he agrees after a moment, his voice sounding far-away.
It takes them nearly twenty minutes, but the woman’s arms are strapped tightly to the sides of the cross, splayed out and wrists exposed. Her legs are too long for it, so she has to twist her lower body to the left and bend her knees until they are jutting out. The man ties her legs to the post and sits back.
“Nail me in,” she says finally, her breath controlled and face hardened. He looks at her, shaking his head.
“I don’t want to- tying you up is enough.”
“You promised,” she warns, her tone steely. She’s bracing herself for the pain that would come.
Reluctantly, the man shuffles back to the tent and opens his backpack. Taking out three horseshoe nails, nails as long as the length of his hand, and a hammer, he comes back out and sets two of the nails down. The woman looks at him for a moment, eyes blank and her jaw clenching. The man sits there on his knees, staring up at her, and she stares back, silently communicating for what feels like hours, but it’s only a few minutes.
“Okay,” she breathes. “I’m ready.”
Slowly the man takes the horseshoe nail and positions it near the woman’s right palm. The sharp tip grazes her skin and she tries to hide her shudder. He prepares the hammer, testing it to make sure the first strike will be true.
When the hammer slams against the flat end of the nail, a strangled scream escapes from the corner of the woman’s mouth. The man can hear the metal try to push through the sinews of muscle and tensile bone. Blood gushes past the nail as it breaks through the bone, and after one more strike of the hammer, the nail connects to the wooden post. The man looks up to the woman’s eyes, murmuring apologies. The woman shakes violently, tongue between her teeth as she tries not to scream. She breathes shallowly after a moment, then nods and struggles out a “the other hand now.” The man positions another nail, this time to the left, and strikes harder. The woman grunts hard and bites down on her tongue so hard blood spills from her mouth. She swallows a mouthful of blood and her nostrils flare, pupils dilating. The nail doesn’t take as long as to go through her hand, and the man reaches down to get the final nail to put through her feet-
“Don’t.” she gasps. “That’s enough.” She leans her head back against the wood. The man sits back on his haunches and stares at her, unsure of why he went through with this. But he can’t do anything now, it’s past undoing. He watches the blood drip down to the ground, spattering the leaves in crimson and staining the wood.
“Do you need anything?” The man breaks the silence. “Water? Medicine?” The woman shakes her head and closes her eyes. She hoped that the shock of having two nails driven into her hands would kill her instantly, or after a few hours, if not maybe after a few days of starvation and no water would do her in.
“I just want to get this over with,” she murmurs, tongue heavy and tender in her mouth.
---
Kyungsoo is roused from his sleep after his stomach rumbles. He doesn’t bother to fumble for his flashlight as he pokes his hand aimlessly through his backpack for another packet of ramyun. He tears through the plastic wrapping and gnaws on the whole ramyun block, finishing it in minutes. He doesn’t bother to throw away the wrapping and drifts off back to sleep, his last thoughts about naming the woman Hee Young, her name meaning eternal pleasure and prosperity.
・
It is not until Kyungsoo hastily packs up the next morning and heads northwest for an hour when he realizes he’s ran out of food. When he stops for a break, he rummages through his backpack for a bottle of water and another packet of ramyun noodles, but instead of feeling the noodles he feels the bottom of his backpack. Confused, he searches through it, looking under his soiled clothes and blankets, but finds nothing.
Worry clogs every nook and cranny in Kyungsoo’s mind. His body wants to increase his pace and maybe he’ll find the trail soon, and if he follows it he’ll find a rest stop, but his mind tells him that if he increases his pace, he’ll burn the food in his stomach faster and have no energy to go find help. He settles on walking, ignoring the way his stomach whines for more food. He’s even ran out of seasoning packets. He takes large gulps of water and banks right, heading where he believes is north. “I should’ve bought a map,” he mumbles to himself. “I should’ve bought more food. I should’ve called Ryohei. I should’ve followed Mochizuki when I had the chance.
“I shouldn't have come here.” His words are muffled by the trees, and he’s trapped in a sea of green and brown, no sign of the sky past the frail branches and endless leaves. Kyungsoo travels farther and then he can’t go on any further, his knees giving in and lays down on the ground, too exhausted to put up his tent.
・
Kyungsoo takes a swig of the last of his water when he wakes up. Cracks and spaces in the trees show the sky turning orange and pink. Kyungsoo is damp and itchy; a phantom insect crawls on his back and he does a half-hearted shake to get it off. Twigs and dirt collect in his hair, but he makes no move to remove them. He is too sleep and too tired to do anything about it, so he stays there on the ground, dreaming of home, his parents, his colleagues at the publishing office, Ryohei and his friends, and the trail.
“Get me out of here,” a sob escapes from his lips.
・
His flashlight dies out on him, and his phone has twelve percent of battery life left. Kyungsoo leaves it off and cries openly to make up for the stifling silence of the forest. Something breaks a twig behind him, but he doesn’t bother to check. He eventually falls asleep again, hearing the words “you should have called earlier”, but he assumes that’s just the wind.
・
Daylight hasn’t even begun, but Kyungsoo struggles to get up and heads further north. He swallows frequently to moisten the patch of dryness that forms in his throat. He stumbles into a tree and stands there for a few minutes before he realizes that he hasn’t moved yet. He trudges on, mind wandering off to anything and nothing. He trips on a small stone, but the feeling of the slippery stone against the sole of his boot is enough to make him collapse face-first into a pile of leaves. He dozes off, ignoring a beetle crawling the shell of his ear.
---
The midday mist slowly rolls in, clouding the ground in swirling gray haze. The man finishes cooking a pot of udon, his rope to hang himself by his side. Hee Young falls in and out of conscious, trying to die, but despite the pain and the methodical checking of her pulse, she’s still hanging on. She curses faintly, and the man wants to ask her to repeat it, but inside he doesn’t want her to waste her strength.
The smell of the broth boiling stirs Hee Young from her stupor. She groans, fingers twitching slightly. The man looks up at her, the dried blood stark against the pale wood.
“Couldn’t you have cooked that someplace else?” Hee Young’s voice is faint and raspy.
“I’m sorry,” the man feels guilty and almost thinks about knocking the pot of noodles to the ground, but it would be such a crime to waste all this food. He takes some steaming noodles out of the pot with a pair of chopsticks, blowing on them faintly, some of the aroma wafting towards Hee Young. She grunts in protest.
The man holds out the chopsticks to her. “Please eat.” He pleads. “You need to-”
“I’m trying to die here.” She throws a baleful look at him, as best as she could. “I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since I nailed you.” Hee Young swallows back a hoarse giggle.
“I’m not hungry.”
The man shakes the noodles in fervor. “I don’t care, I can’t watch you starve. Please, Hee Young, I need you to eat, if only a little.” Hee Young glares at him, but doesn’t tell the man to go away when he stands up and presses the limp noodles against her pursed lips. Hee Young looks at him with her sad eyes, and she groans as she finally parts her lips and lets the noodles be pushed into her mouth.
“Fuck you,” she says through a mouthful of food and an injured tongue.
“I love you too.” The man gets more noodles and continues to feed Hee Young.
---
Kyungsoo gets back up after an hour passed out on the ground. Something in him tells him, just a bit more, move your legs Kyungsoo, come on, just keep at it. He grabs at the nearest tree for support and forces himself to put one foot in front of the other. It is a slow and arduous process, but he keeps on and the trees are getting sparse in number. The green looks lush and vibrant, and sudden warmth creeps into his bones. Just a bit further, he tells himself; the warmth feels so welcoming, like a phantom hug. The forest begins to clear and past a few trees, a clearing that stretches past Kyungsoo’s peripheral vision, and he breaks into a jumbled half sprint, until a clear blue appears in the front of him and he breaks free, finally, from the thick of the forest.
He has found the trail, with Lake Saiko in the slight distance. The lake is a glittering deep blue with the morning sun’s light reflecting brightly off it’s calm surface. Not too far away from it is the beachfront of the Nemba lakeshore, and there are people in the distance. Tears trickle down Kyungsoo’s cheeks, and he sits down at the shore, the last thing he thinks is that this is the most beautiful sight in the world.
・
part four
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