The short-haired girl watched Stake staring at the dolls, so took it upon herself to introduce them. She hugged her own and said, "This is Mr. Gau." It seemed like a very realistic bear cub in some ways, but its eyes were too large and it had no nose or mouth and only stubby vestigial limbs. The lack of a mouth and ineffectual arms and legs were a common theme with kawaii-dolls, to make them look helpless, vulnerable, submissive. Stake had read that critics of the dolls viewed this as a conspiracy, sending signals to young girls that these passive qualities were what would appeal to men when they became adult women.
There was a little metal straw extending from between Mr. Gau's legs. Yuki's friend uncapped it, held the teddy bear up and sucked at the straw, keeping her eyes on Stake's. At this, the bear lifted its head higher, blinking, and made a rumbling sound like a purr or muffled growl in spite of its missing mouth. Its tiny half-limbs swam in the air. Finished, the girl recapped the straw and the bear went immobile again. She smiled, licking her lips. "Ruou gau is a rice wine the Vietnamese like, made with bile from a bear's gall bladder. The Chinese used to have bear farms where they put catheters in live bears to drain it. But Mr. Gau is filled with pineapple CandyPop." She giggled.
"Mm," Stake said. He hadn't realized the dolls could be so educational. But however slight his knowledge of animal anatomy, he knew a bear's gall bladder was not between its hind legs.
"There were only a hundred-fifty copies of the Deluxe Mr. Gau made," the girl announced proudly. She gestured to the reddish-haired girl's pet. "Suzu's doll is number four in a series of only a hundred!" She pouted as if in sad envy. Suzu giggled, less sulky all of a sudden, and held her doll higher for him to see. It was a thing like a clockwork robot from some long-antiquated future vision, made from a goldish tarnished metal (or plastic resembling metal), somewhat turtle-like in form. The whole time they had been talking, this thing had been watching Stake avidly, turning its head ever so slightly to track his smallest shift in position. He found it unsettling.
Not to be outdone, the Hispanic girl spoke up loudly with a kind of arrogant pride to say, "Mine is only one of four hundred. That's still pretty rare!"
Yuki was able to speak again. "Maria got hers for her Sweet Sixteen party two weeks ago, like I got Dai-oo-ika for my Sweet Sixteen party last month." At the memory of this event, she looked like a woman who had watched her child murdered before her eyes. Stake saw Suzu's hand give Yuki's thigh a squeeze.
Stake recognized that Maria's kawaii-doll was not an animated toy like the other two, but a bio-engineered organism. Its functions were simple; despite its seemingly higher evolution, it was as primitive a thing as a starfish. It was little more than an anthropomorphic starfish in shape, too: four pointed pink limbs and a pointed pink head with eyes like black marbles pressed in dough, and no other features but for its outie navel. The near-mindless organism squirmed with the uncertain slow-motion movements of a newborn infant.
"Yuki's dad's company makes Stellar," Maria said. "And he made Dai-oo-ika, too. But there's only one Dai-oo-ika."
Sniffing, Yuki nodded. "Dai-oo-ika is the rarest kawaii-doll in Punktown, Daddy says." Her voice came close to breaking as she squeaked, "And I love him, too!"
During an awkward moment in which he was at a loss as to how he might properly console a person in this situation, Stake heard the ring of a hand phone. "Oh. oh," said the short-haired girl urgently, digging the tiny device out of her blazer's pocket. "The channel is open." Maria leaned in close to gaze at its minuscule screen. The short-haired girl pressed some keys, then brought the phone to her ear. "Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
In a whisper, Suzu explained to Stake, "It's a Ouija phone."
"Ah." He nodded.
Another craze with the kids. At first, skeptics had accused the phone makers of recording false ghost voices that callers could tune in to, and there were a few disingenuous services where live people posed as dead people (when hassled by consumer groups, such services protested that their operators were sensitives, channeling the voices of the dead), but in fact the majority of these instruments did what they purported to do. The technology for them was based on the findings of government-commissioned Theta research groups, as they were called, which sent probes- and even researchers themselves-to investigate other planes of existence. Whether one chose to consider them souls in the religious sense, or merely sketchy traces of electromagnetic life energy imprinted on the ether, the voices on the Ouija phones didn't so much interact with the callers as moan and lament in more or less inarticulate despair, though some kids claimed to establish bonds with certain spirits. Other kids just liked to talk dirty and taunt them.
"Hello? What?" said the short-haired girl. She visibly shuddered and gave a nervous smile to the others. "Can you say that again?"
"What channel are you on, Kaori?" Maria asked, whipping out her own Ouija phone. It was shocking pink with tiny skull-and-crossbones all over it.
"Have you ever tried one, mister?" Suzu asked, watching Stake's face as he observed Maria's attempts to tune into the same frequency her friend was using.
Stake thought of the men who had died beside him, all around him, in the Blue War. But what would they have to say to him, if any of them should indeed be in that junkyard of spirit scraps? Would they rage at him in envy for returning home alive in their place? And then, what of the people he had killed? What would they want to tell him? Stake hoped his own shudder was not visible to the others.
"No," he said. "I haven't." "Want to try it?"
The short-haired girl, Kaori, was saying into the mouthpiece, "Can you tell me your name?"
Before Stake could say "no" again, a male voice behind him said, "Mr. Stake?"
Stake turned around a little too quickly, to meet the gaze of a tall and handsome Asian man in a five-piece suit, terracotta in color, expensive but cut loose-fitting and comfortable so that he didn't suffer that embalmed bureaucrat look. He grinned and extended a hand tipped in shiny manicured nails. "I'm John Fukuda."
"Mr. Fukuda."
"I trust my daughter and her chums were keeping you entertained?" He looked past Stake at the group of uniformed girls. "And what are you ladies doing here?"
Yuki pouted. "I thought you might need me to join you, Daddy, to talk to your friend about Dai-oo-ika."
"My dear, if I need you to talk to Mr. Stake I will be sure to summon you. But you just trust me to take care of this. For now, I will tell him all that you've told me, and we'll go from there-all right?" He reached out to cup her lovely face. "I know how much this hurts you." She nodded miserably.
Fukuda faced his guest again. "At the end of the day I customarily use the gym here for an hour. Would you mind accompanying me? And you're welcome to use the equipment, too, while we talk."
"Um… it's fine to talk there. Any place you like."
"Very good. I'm a creature of habit. Habit is the closest I can come to self-discipline," he joked.
"Can you give us a ride to the Canberra Mall on the way home, Daddy?" Yuki spoke up.
"Yes, yes, very well. If you don't mind waiting another hour. Why don't you girls go sit in the cafeteria or something?"
"Okay, Daddy."
"And I wish you'd stop using those morbid phones," he added, but with a weary sigh rather than disgust. "This way, please, Mr. Stake."
"Nice to meet you girls," Stake said, his eyes drawn back to Kaori with her Ouija phone cupped to her ear. She was intent on whatever it was she was hearing, ignoring the conversation of the living people.