‘Yup.’
‘Then, how come you’re hanging around here? Males are supposed to be in the Occupancy Zone, aren’t they?’
‘Shh!’ He put a finger to his lips.
He walked quickly, and I had a hard time keeping up.
We didn’t have to go far before the houses started to peter out, giving way to fields and the overgrown ruins of old factories. He seemed to want to steer us away from places where we might run into someone.
‘Wanna come to my house?’ he asked as we walked along the wall of an automobile plant that had shut down long, long ago. I nodded. I really couldn’t say why, but I was suddenly overjoyed.
‘You can’t tell anyone else about it.’ In spite of this admonition, it was clear he had trusted me from the start. ‘I don’t have a home of my own, so I’m borrowing this place.’
He ducked into the automobile plant through a break in the wall. Somewhat removed from the main building was a small shack, like a school custodian’s office or a night watchman’s room. He headed towards it.
‘I almost never go outside. That’s why it was such a stroke of luck that I met you. Sometimes I want to go out dressed as a boy so badly I can’t help myself, but I only do it maybe once a month, and always in the middle of the night.’
‘Once a month?’ I repeated. He locked the door from the inside. It was dark. There were windows in two of the walls, but the shutters were closed.
‘Yeah. But after you gave me that rabbit, I sort of started to feel like I wanted to see you again right away. So I went out anyway, over and over again. Even though it was risky. I’m lucky I never got caught. Gives me the chills right now just thinking about it.’
There seemed to be two rooms. He took off his shoes, then picked them up. I did the same.
‘You don’t have to. Since they’re girl shoes,’ he laughed. ‘These shoes, they belonged to my father. They’re still a little big on me.’
‘Fah-thur?’
‘It means a male parent.’
‘Wait, a man can be a parent?’ I was taken aback and kind of appalled, and my voice came out sounding idiotic. Did that mean that being involved in reproduction was all it took to be a parent?
‘Uh-huh. You must have a male parent yourself,’ he said calmly.
‘No way. I don’t even have a mother.’
‘But you used to, right?’ Hiro was laughing.
I suddenly wanted him to know everything about me, so I started blabbering about my family and school and stuff.
‘This “sister” of yours, are you related by blood?’
I was startled by how perceptive Hiro’s question was. My mother had been living with my grandma, unmarried, but she’d adopted a child. That was my sister. Me she gave birth to herself.
‘Knew it. Can’t hide something like that. I mean come on, two women can’t make a baby, no matter how long they live together.’
‘Obviously. They make them at the hospital.’
‘But if a man and a woman are living together, they can make one naturally.’
Which is exactly why the males have to be kept in the GETO. If they were allowed to roam free, the radiation or whatever it is they emit would make all the women around them pregnant.
When I voiced this thought, though, he laughed at me. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’ Hiro had been laughing pretty much the whole time.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because being with you is fun.’
‘Why do you live in a place like this?’
‘Because I ran away from home, obviously.’
‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She lives near here. Not so far from your house, actually. When I go out during the day, I wear girl’s clothes, it’s safer that way. But I can’t stand skirts. When I was little, I didn’t mind dressing up like a girl at all, though.’
Hiro said he didn’t know where she’d found him, but his mother had been living with a man. Apparently, he stayed hidden up in the attic so no one would find out. It was a big place on the outskirts of town and the neighbours were pretty far away, so he would go for walks in the garden at night. Then one winter he died of some disease. They couldn’t take him to the doctor, naturally.
When she got pregnant, his mother had asked a friend who worked at the hospital to forge a permit for her. Then a few years later the other woman had used that favour to blackmail her.
‘In your case, they probably couldn’t arrange a permit like that. Take a look at the birthplace listed in your family register sometime. I bet it gives the address of the detention centre where your mother’s being held.’
I had even opened up to him about that. But because he’d shown himself to me, he was vulnerable too, so I wasn’t worried.
When it got to be around noon, Hiro got out some bread and juice. Apparently, his mother brought him food sometimes, and other times he would go out and buy it himself, dressed as a girl.
When we were finished, I took a cigarette out of my bag. He told me he’d never smoked one, and I showed him how. It made him dizzy, I guess, and he fell over backwards. He wasn’t getting back up, so eventually I leaned over and peered at his face. Suddenly he hugged me, then flipped me over and pinned me down like we were wrestling. At first, I thought he was just messing around. But he wasn’t. Not in the slightest. Hiro wasn’t messing around at all.
I spent the rest of that day learning the unexpected, dreadful truth about human life. Learning it with my body.
When I got home that evening a little after seven, my sister was already there.
‘You’re mighty late.’
Without a word, I started to go upstairs.
‘What about dinner?’
‘I ate at my friend’s house.’
I went up to my room and collapsed onto the bed.
‘There’s something off about this society. Women and women? What kind of a world is that?’
Hiro had said this as I was leaving to go home. He’d been rough, but he had also been tender in his own way. He said it had to stay our secret, but that was obvious. He also said that what we did was natural. Maybe so, but what a dreadful thing it was!
I plunked my elbows down on the desk and spaced out. Then I smoked one of my precious cigarettes.
Asako came in without warning.
‘I’ve been knocking for a while, why didn’t you answer? And where did you get that? Aha, so you’re the little sneak thief.’
‘What do you want?’ I replied finally, frowning.
‘Grandma’s calling for you.’
I stood up lethargically.
Why the hell would Grandma be calling for me at this hour?
‘Can’t you just tell her I don’t feel well?’
‘No, I can’t,’ declared my sister sternly. How could she be so self-assured? There were things in this life she didn’t have a clue about. But it’s precisely because they don’t know about the dreadful stuff that ignorant people are able to be so confident. But that glittering gaze of hers still somehow made me feel small.
‘What’s wrong with you? You seem out of it.’
‘Nothing, I’m fine.’
She could never imagine what I had done. She didn’t have the knowledge or experience. In fact, Asako would most likely live out the rest of her life without ever experiencing that dreadful, spine-tingling thing for herself. And she was lucky. I could never tell anyone the unthinkable truth I had learned that afternoon.
Grandma was sitting in an enormous chair, eating candy. Her skirt was immoderately short. So short that when I opened the door, for a second I thought she wasn’t wearing one at all.
‘I was going through my wardrobe, and I found some of the clothes I used to wear when I was young. What do you think? Funny, huh?’
Was she going senile or something? I shook my head.