Chapter Two

On the last day of Obon, my mother placed a small ceramic hibachi (portable brazier) at the entrance. She sawed pieces of pine wood, collected from the beach, into uniform sizes with a small saw. She arranged them in a crisscross pattern, stacking them beautifully with her characteristic meticulousness, almost like an altar. She then laid out red, withered pine needles inside the stack, and I lit the fire.

Normally, I would get scolded for playing with fire, but this time, with my mother’s permission, I felt a small thrill in my heart.

“Why do we burn it in front of the entrance?” I asked.

My mother answered, “It’s called ‘okuribi’—a sending-off fire. We burn it to send off our ancestors who have returned home during Obon. It’s to make sure they don’t get lost on their way back.”

“Do lots of people do this?”

“More and more families don’t do okuribi these days. Maybe because of housing issues or something. The smoke can bother neighbors, you know. But Kyoto’s famous ‘Daimonji Okuribi’ is well known. Have you heard of the ‘Daimonji’ that burns and consumes itself?”

I had never been to Kyoto, but I had a feeling it was a special place for Japanese people. It appeared often in my social studies textbooks. I was taught that Kyoto had a certain feeling or spirit that cities like Tokyo, Osaka, or Nagoya did not.

The custom of the “Daimonji” in Kyoto came to my mind. The image of the large kanji character for “big” blazing in the night sky seemed like a special thing unique to Kyoto, unlike anything in my town.

My family had run a seafood wholesaler business for generations, and our property was spacious. Even if some smoke rose, it wouldn’t trouble our neighbors.

The pine needles, rich with resin, burned fiercely, flames shooting up along the small branches. The stacked branches caught fire one after another, sacrificing themselves to make the flames grow higher. They quickly turned into black charcoal.

“On the last day of Obon, we light the sending-off fire like this. If we don’t, other people will say our family is careless.”

I thought the flames were beautiful. I felt like nothing in the world could be more beautiful than this.

I wondered why I found this fire beautiful. Was it the same for other people? I wanted to ask my mother but was held back by shyness and the barrier of our mother-child relationship. Asking felt too intimate.

I thought the fire, which served as a guidepost, connected the living me and the dead. I felt a chill thinking that my deceased grandfather and grandmother might be lurking somewhere in the dark around us, using this fire as a marker. Maybe because I was seeing through the dead, the fire looked mysteriously beautiful.

Perhaps children play with fire because it’s beautiful and mysterious... they are drawn to that mystique.

The fire’s strength waned, the flames flickering small. Our shadows—my mother’s and mine—also shrank, wavering gently on the stone pavement of the garden.

My mother’s eyes were not on the fire but on the neighbors’ windows.

Summer vacation ended, and I started riding the bus to school again.

There were some high school boys, too.

When I saw one of them, I somehow felt close to him, as if sharing a secret. It wasn’t so much that I was in the same world as him, but that he had rolled into my world.

Rainy days or sunny days, he rode the bus and quietly sat looking at the scenery.

I didn’t know his name, and we never spoke. But he was definitely part of my world.

I copied him by leaving the second button of my school uniform open.

At first, it was embarrassing and took courage. I worried if others would think I was a delinquent, or if I would get scolded. Sometimes teachers would tell me, “Button up!” When things cooled down, I would unbutton again.

After dinner, I often stayed in my room.

Of course, I studied, but mostly I watched videos on YouTube. I tried to learn English hit songs from THE FIRST TAKE on YouTube. I got the lyrics from SNS. I listened to the same song over and over, humming along. Sometimes, I tilted my head or squinted as I sang.

Neither my father nor my mother cared that I was holed up in my room.

Since starting middle school, I only had the feeling that studying was tough. I had made them think that way.

My father was obsessed with a new business and only cared about money calculations. My mother seemed to live for appearances and was always worried about how others saw her. For her, my good grades were just a tool for showing off.

Once, she put my report card and mock exam rankings on the refrigerator door. Whenever guests came, she proudly said, “Our son is working hard.” I silently took down the report cards and rankings from the fridge. When I pulled the paper off, the magnet made a sharp click, and the papers slid silently into my hands.

I thought death was a world completely unrelated to me.

When my grandfather and grandmother died, I felt no sadness or tears. It was just that there were fewer people to give me New Year’s money. I regretted their absence only because of that loss, not because of loneliness.

But death was right beside me.

At night, I felt like the dead were lurking everywhere the light couldn’t reach. There seemed to be a thin transparent membrane around me; if I peeled it away, the dead would swarm out. They were already there, staring at me from the depths of darkness—not out of curiosity but waiting to possess me the moment I showed a weakness.

Darkness itself was terror.

From then on, I began to sleep with the light on.

In the morning, the fear disappeared, but it hadn’t gone away—it stuck to my skin like a sting. Sometimes, it felt like someone threw ice on my back, a scream inside my body. At those times, I got goosebumps all over. My nerves became so sensitive that even the air touching my skin hurt.

Those moments lasted less than a second, and I realized that “that chill” felt exactly like this.

After morning classes ended and lunch break came, I watched my classmates running in the schoolyard through the window. Some played soccer, some girls happily jumped rope.

The late summer heat had softened, and under the comfortable sunlight, they shone brightly. My worries didn’t even matter compared to their radiance.

I was the only one living side by side with death.

I sang an English song while looking out the classroom window. I tilted my head slightly, curled my lips a bit. I sang casually, with a faintly melancholic expression. I was pleased, thinking that I probably looked just like that high school boy now.

“That song’s a hit right now,” a female classmate once told me.

“Yeah,” I replied curtly on purpose.

She seemed like she wanted to say something else. Though I heard her voice, the scenery outside the window felt much clearer.

This girl was not wrapped in death. I could not sense the terror or lament that clung to me.

Between her and me lay a deep and wide valley where voices couldn’t reach. Her dazzling brightness left a slow ache in my chest.

This bright girl who wasn’t wrapped in death was outside my standard.

I believed that somewhere, someone far better than me was waiting. I felt like there was a woman who always carried death on her back and sometimes held its hand for a walk.

At that moment, I felt something unreachable trembling behind her voice. But I was already living inside that “song.”