Yoiyama Theater

Konagai lived on Muromachi Street, near the intersection with Rokkaku Street in the northwest part of the Shijo Karasuma district. His residence was a studio flat in a building erected eighteen years previously. Few students could afford to live in such an area, but the owner of this building happened to be his uncle, who rented the flat to him quite cheaply.

Most people would consider themselves lucky, but whenever marveling friends from school came to visit, Konagai had only complaints to regale them with: how the bike ride to campus took a whole twenty minutes; how crowded the neighborhood outside the building was; how ominous sounds were always emanating from the walls; how the next-door neighbor was always bringing home girls (pretty ones, too); how the third floor landing was haunted…

And above all, how much he hated the Gion Festival.

The festivities reached their climax during the night of Yoiyama and the float parade on the following day. Sightseers poured into the neighborhood from every direction imaginable. They came on bullet trains, on the JR line, on the Hankyu line, on the Keihan line, on the Kintetsu line—all told there were hundreds of thousands of them. Come the evening of Yoiyama, the surrounding streets would be packed to the gills with street vendors and tourists and locals. Koiyama would be erected near his apartment building, illuminating the street below with its paper lanterns.

Konagai shut himself up in the apartment when the midpoint of the Gion Festival approached, for fear that once he was sucked into the wave of people streaming by, he wouldn’t be able to get back again. Did all these people really have to pick this one place to gather at the same time? he would grumble to himself, alone in his room.

“If all you’re going to do is complain about the Gion Festival,” someone once admonished him, “why don’t you pack your bags and go relax at the Ohara no Sato hot springs or something until the festival’s over? Nobody’s stopping you.”

To tell the truth, Konagai was of the same opinion. And yet, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Moving’s a pain in the ass.”

The second thing was, “Man, I hate the Gion Festival…”

In spite of that, Konagai could occasionally be seen sitting on his balcony gazing down at the throngs below, sipping a beer contentedly as he squinted in the light of the float. Some people thought that he secretly enjoyed the Gion Festival. Whenever someone suggested that to him, he would flatly deny the rumor.

“I know how selfish I am, but I’m man enough to take whatever pain that brings me,” he once said. “Whatever happens, I’ll take care of it—as long as I get to complain a little more than the next guy.”

　　　　　　　◯

Our story begins at the crack of dawn on the day of Yoiyama.

Day was breaking as Konagai finished up the last of the night’s work. The only thing on his mind was the prospect of sleep, no matter how little. The cawing of crows scavenging through the trash echoed around him as he groggily trudged through the alleys, heading for home, and his slightly grubby futon. Above the corners of the buildings, the cloudless blue July sky was streaked through with the steadily growing rays of dawn. In the stillness of the morning, it was almost unfathomable that these deserted streets would soon be filled with the bedlam of Yoiyama.

“Of course no one’s around before the start of the festival,” Konagai grumbled to himself. “Bunch of bandwagoners.”

He glanced up. Alone in the deserted expanse of Muromachi Street stood the roped-up silhouette of Koiyama.

“Jackass,” growled Konagai.

Rubbing his eyes as he walked up the stairs to his apartment, he took the briefest of showers to wash off the sweat before collapsing into his futon completely naked. Just as he began to nod off, a call came in from his friend Maruo.

“Hey, great work last night, hope you’re not too put out, huh? See you later today?”

“I’ve got work in three hours. Just let me sleep.”

“I’m counting on you, you know—”

“Piss off.”

Konagai abruptly hung up before Maruo could finish.

Before he dozed off completely, his thoughts began to drift back.

The runup to this year’s Yoiyama had been incredibly exhausting, primarily due to Maruo, who had invited Konagai to meet him at the university’s central cafeteria back when the first buds of spring had only just begun to bloom. The two were not especially close, but they had been in the same lab group. Konagai knew Maruo as a laidback, potbellied, flabby-armed fellow who was rather capable at getting others to do his bidding: in other words, someone who knew how to get things done.

The dingy fluorescent lights of the cafeteria buzzed overhead as Maruo polished off a mouthful of miso-stewed mackerel and smacked his lips with gusto, before announcing, “I’m starting a club.”

This proclamation failed to impress Konagai. For one, he had worked as part of the theater club stage crew, until the grueling work of last year’s cultural festival led him to quit. He had no interest in burning out again. Besides, there was something fishy about the whole affair. Few students would just up and start a club out of nowhere halfway into their college careers without some ulterior motive in mind. Konagai suspected that this was just a way for Maruo to rope a bunch of young coeds into his own personal harem, and that suspicion was cause enough for him to turn the offer down.

Maruo pulled up a sleeve and rubbed his underarm fat, sounding injured.

“What a thing to say, what a thing. All the ladies love me, you know.”

“...I’m not even going to try to argue with you.”

“It’ll only be until the summer. Look, I know someone from the Nara Prefecture student association, guy by the name of Otogawa, it’s his ask. He works at a thrift store, and I lent him a hand for a job a while back—I mucked up the whole thing, total wash—and that’s why he asked me to work on this job.”

“Hold on a second. If you mucked everything up, why would he ask you to do another job?”

“Perfection isn’t everything.” Maruo tittered unpleasantly. “The plan is to create an ersatz Gion Festival.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Details can wait. We’ll be calling the club the Gion Festival High Council.”

“You sure that will fly? I don’t think the real Gion Festival people will be very happy with you.”

“There’ll even be compensation the day of the festival: thirty thousand yen for the night’s work.”

“Thirty thousand!”

“Well, that’s how much work we’ll be expecting from you, but really, Otogawa will be handling most of the heavy lifting.”

Konagai crossed his arms and thought as Maruo leered at him. Thirty thousand yen was a lot of money. And while he had gotten pretty burnt out, Konagai was a veritable legend of the stage crew, and he knew it. The days since he quit the theater club last fall had felt empty and meaningless, but now he felt his inner stagehand begin to stir.

“I’ve heard the stories about you,” Maruo casually remarked. “You are the guy that built the castle at the cultural festival, yes?”

Konagai modestly shook his head, trying to keep the satisfaction from showing on his face. “Someone else thought that up; I was just the logistics guy.”

“I’m telling you, you’re just the guy this enterprise needs to succeed,” entreated Maruo, thrusting out a fleshy hand.

After considering for a moment, Konagai reached out and shook Maruo’s hand. He knew how selfish he was, but he was also quite conscious of the fact that he was a sucker for a compliment.

　　　　　　　◯

Konagai rose groggily from his futon, a surly expression on his face. He had only slept for three hours.

He took a near-freezing shower, yelping as the cold water pounded his body.

Leaving his abode, Konagai walked down the stairs to find the narrow confines of Muromachi Street already swarming with people. Many of them were stopping to take pictures in front of Koiyama. In an instant Konagai’s face turned sour. Though the lanterns on the floats would not be lit until sundown, already tourists were pouring into Kyoto for Yoiyama.

“Nobody wants you here,” Konagai sulkily muttered to himself, as if he spoke for the entire neighborhood.

After several minutes of pushing through the crowds, he arrived at a convenience store on Sanjō Street. The manager was standing in front of the store next to a cooler filled to the brim with ice. He was round and rather shaped like a kamo eggplant, animatedly hawking juice and beer to the festival crowds.

“Good morning.”

“Morning, morning...say, Konagai, you’re sure you can’t come in tonight?”

“No, sorry, I can’t make it tonight.”

“I see...well...shame, that…”

Leaving the manager to mumble to himself, Konagai went to the back of the store to change. He worked weekends here with the eggplant-shaped manager, choosing the job simply because it was only a few minutes’ walk from his studio. He had asked to take this weekend off ages ago, but none of the other employees would switch with him, and in the end he had to settle for getting off at five in the afternoon—hence, his current sleep deprivation.

It irritated Konagai how brisk business was during the Gion Festival. What was the point of coming all this way for the festival just to buy things at a convenience store?

He went out front to take over for the manager.

“Take this, you’ll need it,” said the manager, offering him a navy blue handkerchief emblazoned with a white praying mantis. “Nice, ennit? I bought it when I snuck off for a gander at Tōrōyama yesterday.”

Forcing a smile onto his face, Konagai called out to the tourists loitering along the narrow street: “Juice! Ice cold beer! Fried chicken!” His voice was ragged with fatigue and lack of sleep. Wrinkles would gather on his forehead whenever he zoned out for even a moment. With the sun rising higher in the sky, and the throngs pressing in on the street, the heat soon became unbearably stifling. Konagai draped the handkerchief over his shoulder so he could wipe away the sweat from his brow, and whenever he began to feel faint he took out a piece of ice from the cooler and pressed it to his head.

As the day weathered on, Maruo suddenly emerged from out of the crowd. The crew had worked furiously all through the previous night, but Maruo had somehow managed to slip away halfway through. Tellingly, his unblemished complexion had none of the pallid hue that normally accompanies an all-nighter: if anything, his skin was even more radiant than usual.

“Fried chicken please. Oh, and a beer,” he announced.

A furrow crept onto Konagai’s forehead.

“Where did you sneak off to last night?”

“Come on, you can’t blame me for being tired, right? That’s why I called this morning, you know, I really felt bad about being the only one to get a full, peaceful night of sleep.”

Maruo took a big bite of chicken, washed it down with a swig of beer and continued, “There’s really nothing, you know, nothing like tossing back a cold one in front of someone toiling away under the hot sun. This must be what a guilty pleasure tastes li—”

“Yeah, okay, good for you. How’s everything coming along?”

“Splendidly, just as I envisioned it. Kingyohoko should be done on time, thanks to Yamadagawa’s fine efforts, and we’re due to conduct a test run of the nagashi sōmen and fans momentarily. I haven’t been able to contact Otogawa, which I admit is worrisome...but then again, he does have a flair for mystery.”

“I don’t feel like going anymore. I don’t really have to be there, do I?”

“Don’t be silly, today’s our chance to show what we’re made of! This could be your one shining moment. Besides,” Maruo added bluntly, “when is anyone going to need you this much again?”

He reached in his bag and produced a chimaki. “Right. You’re going to be stuffing this in the mark’s mouth. Try to get some practice.”

Konagai sighed as Maruo strolled off into the crowd, then reached into the cooler and put another piece of ice to his forehead.

　　　　　　　◯

The Gion Festival High Council was officially inaugurated in mid-May at a pub called Seikitei. Otogawa was nowhere to be seen, so Maruo officiated the meeting in his place.

The corpulent commandant put himself in charge of the entire organization, which would be split into four teams, each with its own leader. Idle students would be rounded up and put to work where extra manpower was needed. Maruo and the four leaders would come up with the battle plan. Otogawa would supervise.

Maruo was waiting in the second floor lounge when Konagai arrived, along with two of the other leaders: Takayabu, a bearded bear of a man, and an elegant-looking woman. Konagai started when he saw the woman—she stopped by the convenience store every Saturday during his shift, just past noon. She peered at his face curiously after he sat down on the tatami across from her, seeming to recognize him as well.

“Have we met somewhere before?” she inquired.

“Yeah, I work at the convenience store every Saturday.”

Her face lit up. “Of course! I didn’t recognize you without the uniform, but I knew I’d seen you somewhere.”

“You live around here?”

“I’m a teacher at a ballet studio on Sanjō Street. Oh, I’m Misaki.”

Konagai could practically see her poised in the middle of a stage, radiating the grace and beauty of a swan.

Misaki was scarcely a year older than Konagai, though her calm demeanor made her seem more mature than her years. She had first become acquainted with Otogawa after she aided with one of his jobs during a pause in a ballet lesson; this incident had somehow also led to her becoming drinking buddies with Maruo.

I knew that guy was a sleazebag, Konagai thought to himself. All in all, though, he was rather pleased to have made this unexpected acquaintance. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad.

The last person was yet to arrive when Maruo stood and called the meeting to order.

“We are here, my friends, to create a fake Gion Festival. Otogawa’s friend Fujita will be coming to Kyoto on Yoiyama. Our objective is to lure him into our ersatz production and give him a little lesson in trickery.”

“Why on earth are we doing that?” asked Misaki.

“Yeah, what’s the point? We settling some kind of score?” said Konagai.

“No, there’s no score, no grand objective,” Maruo explained. “We’re just doing this because Otogawa wants to see it happen. It doesn’t mean anything, and that lack of meaning gives the act meaning. So, we are free to do whatever we please. Otogawa will be footing the bill for everything, by the way. The mark is a first-timer to the Gion Festival, and he doesn’t seem to be the brightest bulb, so have at it!”

Maruo assigned each of them their roles. The big, bearded, intense-looking man in the corner would be in charge of the muscle; Maruo would direct the entire operation; Konagai would handle procurement and logistics; and Misaki would be in charge of the schedule. In addition, they would each play a character and interact with the mark during the show.

Konagai thought that this was getting a little preposterous. “This is a lot of work for a prank,” he confided to Misaki.

“I’m not sure I’ll be up to it,” she agreed.

“You’ll be fine. After all, you’re used to the spotlight. Me, I’ve only ever worked backstage.”

“Our last team leader seems to be running late, but she will serve as our creative director,” announced Maruo.

Konagai had been joking and smiling with Misaki, but the moment he heard these words, the smile slid off his face. He rubbed his stomach, feeling a leaden weight settle in. For some reason, he had a bad feeling about this.

Looking around the many faces in the crowded room, Konagai caught sight of one with which he was all too familiar. It belonged to a woman who was standing on the other side of the lounge, sweeping her haughty gaze across the room. Maruo caught sight of her and called out, “Hoy, Yamadagawa! Over here!”

“Hey, sorry for being late…” The woman stopped and let out a gasp when she noticed Konagai.

“Not you!” Konagai groaned.

“My word, you two are acquainted?” exclaimed Maruo, feigning surprise rather unconvincingly. The notion that Maruo had recruited Konagai for theater work while remaining ignorant of his history with Yamadagawa Atsuko was far fetched, at best.

Yamadagawa Atsuko had been the bullheaded creative director of “The Count of Monte Crackpot”, a guerrilla theater production that was staged during the cultural festival the previous year. Bulldozing through every obstacle in her path, she directed the construction of the Crackpot Castle in the Clouds on top of the engineering building. Her freewheeling, absurdist vision and iron grip on the production drove Konagai to exhaustion, which ultimately lead to his resignation from the company.

Just as Konagai began to get up, Misaki smiled at him and asked, “Do you two know each other?”

“Now, now, Konagai, no need to look so, you know, irate. Sit down, there’s a good lad!” Maruo urged him, a wide grin still plastered on his face.

Frozen on his knees, Konagai looked at Misaki, Maruo, and Yamadagawa in turn. Yamadagawa’s face was inscrutable. No one said a word until Yamadagawa finally took a seat, shooting a withering glance at Konagai.

“Don’t burn out on us this time,” she sneered.

Konagai bristled. “You wish!” he snapped back.

Konagai had a reputation for being easily flattered, but he also never backed down from a challenge.

　　　　　　　◯

By the end of May, the group had met three more times and hammered out the plot. Each time, the discussions were held over food and drink at Seikitei, which meant the bills quickly racked up. “You just let me handle it,” Maruo assured them confidently. Konagai thought that confidence was astonishing, considering none of it was Maruo’s own money, but that didn’t stop him from eating and drinking his fill.

Maruo and Otogawa had already settled on the concept of an Ersatz Gion Festival: the details were left for the group to decide. Maruo proposed that, rather than simply conjuring up a fantastical festival, they concoct a narrative to go along with the manufactured phantasmagoria, and over the course of much debate and discussion, they pieced the story together.

According to this invented lore, each of the Yoiyama floats was maintained by its own neighborhood preservation society; each society reported to the Gion Festival High Council, the magisterial body responsible for disciplining those tourists who dared flout the precepts of the festival; and holding sway over the council was a mysterious figure known as Lord Yoiyama (they later decided that Lord Yoiyama would be played by a goldfish). Fujita, their unfortunate quarry (and Otogawa’s friend), would be apprehended on the pretense of having broken some rule, and consequently be dragged to various stations around town for interrogation before being hauled off to face the empyreal judgment of Lord Yoiyama.

This, Fujita’s trip through hell, would form the substance of the Ersatz Gion Festival.

Knowing what a sucker the mark was, they decided that they would have to rely on size and spectacle to keep him in thrall. With the city thronged for Yoiyama, though, staging sets on real streets was out of the question.

“So what are we going to do?” asked Konagai.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Maruo smugly. “Otogawa has friends in town. All we do is borrow a few of their houses and lure the mark inside, simple as that.”

“Is it, though?” Misaki mused. “What if he runs away?”

“Well, let’s see, let’s see.. We can lock him in a cage, so he can’t get away, and carry it on a litter. Like a mikoshi, you know, with all the guys wearing happi coats shouting and chanting carrying the shrine on their backs. It’ll be fun, like a carnival ride!”

“And if he starts screaming?”

“Then we’ll stuff his mouth with something. Perhaps something, you know, festival-y…”

“A chimaki!” cried Yamadagawa Atsuko.

“Well, those are quite delicious, I suppose.”

“Surely she means the talismans they make from bamboo leaves?” Misaki pointed out. “They sell them during the Gion Festival.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, yes, I daresay it would be rather difficult to talk with a dry bundle of leaves in your mouth.”

“Right? Sometimes I surprise even myself,” boasted Yamadagawa.

“All right, I think we’re ready to get going,” Maruo declared.

“I don’t even want to think about how much this is all gonna cost.”

“No need for worry, my friends, all the money comes no strings attached,” said Maruo, and just as he had assured them, Otogawa gave the plan his blessing.

　　　　　　　◯

Konagai went on break shortly past noon. After slurping up a cup ramen in the back room, he took a walk for a change of pace.

He bought a drink from the vending machine in front of the smoke shop and sipped it slowly, watching the crowds drift by. Some people were already wearing yukata. Couples sauntered down the street, holding hands that must have been sticky with sweat.

As he let out a yawn, Maruo called again.

“Hey, Konagai, glad to hear from you again. I’m doing the final check on the rooftop passages right now. Once we get these lanterns lit, it’s going to look magical, you know? Heady stuff, right?”

“Happy to hear it.”

“And with all the torches glowing below, and Takayabu with the shaved head and his whole body painted white, just standing there...I think my heart would stop, don’t you think so?”

“Sounds great.”

“But I’m telling you, Takayabu just does not want to shave his head, you know, he just keeps chickening out, so I had Yamadagawa give him a little pep talk, but really, I hope he gets himself together soon, I really do…”

“Poor guy.”

“Anywho, with Takayabu out for the mo’, we’re a little shorthanded here. You couldn’t, you know, ditch that lame job of yours and come over early? And I hope you’ve been practicing with that chimaki.”

“Don’t call my job lame. I’m not going anywhere until five.”

“That’s just too bad. I was supposed to meet with Otogawa, but he hasn’t showed up. You know, he just never picks up his phone, can you believe it?”

For all his complaining, Maruo sounded quite sanguine.

“Welp, I’ll be waiting for you. Get off early if you can.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

Konagai practiced thrusting the chimaki a few times before heading back to work.

　　　　　　　◯

With the plan having been finalized in May, the first days of June found the club beginning preparations in earnest. Maruo walked around giving pep talks; Takayabu chanted the Heart Sutra incessantly, preparing for his role as a demonic monk; Misaki, who was to play a maiko, practiced speaking the Kyoto dialect; and Yamadagawa Atsuko threw herself into the work of bringing the ideas teeming in her mind to life. Still, the mastermind of the entire project, Otogawa, was nowhere to be found.

Konagai knew better than anyone how onerous dealing with Yamadagawa Atsuko could be. “Yamadagawa doesn’t have any imagination,” he had once claimed. “Calling it imagination is giving her way too much credit. She’s just a nutcase, and all of her ‘ideas’ are just completely incoherent.”

And just as he had feared, all sorts of requests from Yamadagawa Atsuko started to roll in: washi paper and bamboo strips in bulk for a papier-mâché Kintarō; cardboard, plywood, distemper paint, wire, rope, Christmas lights, and lanterns for the goldfish float; rush mats for seating the mark; wooden lanterns for illumination; daruma dolls, lucky cats, and carved wooden Buddha statues; wind chimes, carp streamers, and pinwheels to hang from the ceiling, and large fans to blow them with.

Failing to meet even one of Yamadagawa’s requests would have been an affront to Konagai’s honor, and so he went out and got washi paper, bamboo strips, cardboard, plywood, distemper paint, wire, rope, and Christmas lights. He constructed lanterns by buying up cheap paper lanterns in bulk and wrapping them with thin paper on which he had printed “Goldfish”. He bought rush mats and wooden lanterns at a home improvement store. He enlisted the help of Kinezuka Enterprises, the company Otogawa worked for, to get the Laughing Buddha statues and daruma dolls and lucky cats.

The goldfish globes did give him pause. They were supposed to be glass orbs suspended from the ceiling like wind chimes, with live goldfish swimming around inside. Konagai had never seen or heard of such a thing. He didn’t have a choice, though, so he headed to the discount store and bought a bunch of round, transparent plastic wind chimes, painstakingly modifying them one by one.

Each new commission from Yamadagawa found Konagai venting fresh frustrations to Maruo, but for all his grumbling, he always pushed his trademark ingenuity to its limits to complete each order.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were enjoying this,” observed Maruo.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Konagai retorted. “I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice, okay? I’m just doing my job!”

All of the completed props were carted off to a house behind Kinezuka Enterprises. True to his word, Otogawa had pulled some strings and secured the use of several adjacent houses and gardens.

Upon learning of this, Yamadagawa’s ambition only grew, and she resolved to transform the entire block into an unearthly facsimile of Yoiyama. She sequestered herself in her new workshop, only infrequently going to campus.

Her pet project was the goldfish float, Kingyohoko. As Konagai lived in the vicinity, he was often asked to help out. Maruo and Misaki were usually sitting in the workshop with a crew of college students, hard at work pasting paper to bamboo strips or toiling at some other fiddly task. Occasionally Takayabu would be there too, hunched uncomfortably over a goldfish globe. Yamadagawa would be standing in the middle of it all, urging their efforts on. Every time Konagai came onto this scene he was hit with horrible flashbacks to his theater days.

Maruo, the nominal director of the operation, cheerily consented to everything that Yamadagawa proposed, so the project soon devolved into a potpourri of Japanese tropes, bearing almost no resemblance to the real Gion Festival. Privately, Konagai referred to this collection of knickknacks as “Yamadagawa Theater”.

One day, as Yamadagawa paced around the workshop carrying the enormous, still-unpainted papier-mâché Kintarō, Konagai pulled her aside and told her, “Don’t you think this is a bit much?”

She scowled at him. “Excuse me, I’m being creative here.”

“Then why don’t you go back and be creative in the theater company?”

Yamadagawa merely sniffed at him as Maruo glided in to defuse the tension.

“Now now, Otogawa is quite pleased by the direction our work is taking. In fact, he regards Yamadagawa’s imagination quite highly.”

“Ha, see!” shouted Yamadagawa, nostrils flaring triumphantly.

Konagai barely glanced her way. “You’re telling me you’re okay with tossing away all the actual traditions and making up a bunch of fairy tale gibberish? Doesn’t it bother you that none of this has anything to do with Kyoto, or even the Gion Festival? Even the mark can’t be stupid enough to swallow all this crap.”

“Perhaps, perhaps you’re overthinking things. What do you know about the Gion Festival, hmm? What about Kyoto traditions? I will be the first to admit that I don’t know the first thing about either of them.”

“I don’t know anything either,” Konagai admitted.

“You see? Nothing to be worried about,” beamed Maruo. “And lest we forget, our mark is just as oblivious.”

Even with so many things on her plate, Yamadagawa managed to keep a close eye on even the smallest details. Takayabu had it the worst of all: not only did he have to paint his body white for his role, he was also being coerced into eating bugs. Courtesy of Otogawa, Maruo had gotten his hands on Ōshū Saikawa hellgrammites, a traditional Chinese medicine. Yamadagawa’s brilliant idea was to use them to make the demon monk even more horrifying.

“All you have to do is scarf a few of them down. Maruo, get more from Otogawa,” she ordered.

“Gimme a break,” Takayabu groaned, burying his face in his hands. “How am I supposed to eat bugs?”

“It’s traditional medicine, you’ll feel strong as an ox.”

“And what exactly am I supposed to use that strength for?”

Yamadagawa’s face lit up again when she heard those words, and in true thespian fashion, whenever Yamadagawa looked happy, Takayabu was about to look sad.

“What if we made the monk super strong? I bet the mark would wet himself. We should make him crush something really hard with his bare hands—no, one-handed!”

“What about walnuts? Those are pretty hard to crack,” offered Misaki, who was sitting in a corner of the room taking wind chimes out of a box and laying them out.

“That sounds like a great idea!” Konagai swiftly piped up, but Yamadagawa immediately shot it down.

“That won’t work,” she said dismissively. “Too small, doesn’t have any impact. There’s nothing scary about it, and what kind of monk walks around carrying walnuts? It doesn’t make any sense. We need something freakier, like...I know! We can use one of those creepy golden lucky cats!”

“That makes even less sense!” Konagai objected, but his protests fell on deaf ears.

“Can you crush a lucky cat with one hand, Takayabu?” Yamadagawa barked.

“Are you kidding? What do I look like, some kind of freak?”

“Oh. Well, that’s a letdown.”

It fell to Konagai to craft a crushable styrofoam facsimile.

She’s really lost it this time, he privately concluded. A bristly-faced, hellgrammite-chomping, lucky cat-crushing, Heart Sutra-chanting monk: sure, it was scary, but it didn’t make a lick of sense, and it definitely had nothing to do with the Gion Festival. Konagai didn’t know what they were trying to accomplish anymore.

　　　　　　　◯

Konagai had returned to his post under the umbrella in front of the convenience store, selling drinks and wiping away sweat.

Glancing around, he saw Misaki’s sedate figure in the crowd. Noticing him staring, she smiled and approached him. Her hair was tied up in a tight bun, as it always was during her Saturday afternoon visits. With her lofty posture and calm demeanor, she was easy to pick out of the crowd.

“Lunch break?” asked Konagai.

“Indeed. One bottle of tea, please.”

Konagai plucked a plastic bottle out of the icy water and wiped it off before handing it to Misaki, who put it to her forehead.

“Ooh, that feels nice,” she sighed. “How are the preparations coming along? I do feel terrible that I can’t make it until later.”

“Maruo seems to have it under control. You done any practicing with the hagoita?” Konagai asked.

“Perish the thought!” Misaki laughed. “I’ll see you later then?”

“Yup. I’m looking forward to seeing your maiko impression!”

Misaki bobbed her head and walked away.

After meeting Misaki, Konagai had learned that ballerinas were not just graceful, delicate creatures.

It all started with the golden lucky cat.

At Yamadagawa’s insistence, Konagai had fashioned a styrofoam replica of a lucky cat statue. It was a little rough around the edges, but from a distance it looked passable. Satisfied with his handiwork, Konagai brought it to the workshop.

The production was well advanced, and the house and its grounds had taken on a most peculiar semblance. Save for Maruo, Misaki, and Yamadagawa, the workshop was empty that day. Yamadagawa was bossing Maruo around, while Misaki was twirling around an enormous hagoita which Konagai had picked up in a thrift store in Ichijouji.

“What dark schemes lurk in your mind?” she muttered to herself, her Kyoto accent still stilted and uncertain. “Only a wolf would claim such innocence in the guise of a lamb. Your guilt, sirrah, is quite manifest! I bid you, speak!”

Konagai acknowledged her with a nod as he passed, making his way over to Yamadagawa, who sat on the floor with her usual scowl, inspecting a row of Shigaraki tanuki ornaments and lucky cat statues.

“It’s done,” said Konagai, handing her the styrofoam lucky cat.

Yamadagawa harrumphed and turned it over, eyeing it shrewdly, then crushed it between her hands. “Good,” she said.

For a moment, Konagai was speechless. “What are you doing!?” he eventually spluttered. “Do you know how hard I worked on that?”

“We wouldn’t know how hard it would be to crush unless we tried it, would we!”

Sensing the sparks flying between the fiery duo, Maruo and Misaki rushed to break up the quarrel before it came to blows. Maruo attempted to reason with Konagai, while Misaki did the same with Yamadagawa. But Yamadagawa’s ire, once sparked, could not be extinguished, and she turned her fury against Misaki, mocking ballet and jeering her inept Kyoto accent.

“Don’t like it? Then you come up with some ideas!”

Misaki was caught off guard. “We, we could, um, put out cotton candy?” she stammered.

Unsurprisingly, this proposal did little to improve Yamadagawa’s mood.

Konagai attempted to come to the rescue. “Cotton candy is a great idea! It’s fanciful! And sweet!”

This only made Yamadagawa angrier.

“Forget the stupid cotton candy!” she shrieked. “You want cotton candy, you can go out to one of the stands and buy it yourself!”

“S-see, Konagai thinks it’s a good idea too…”

“Oh, stop being full of yourself. Konagai’s only said that because he’s being nice! He’s nice to everyone!”

A dangerous look came over Misaki’s face. “I’m not full of myself!”

She raised the hagoita over her head threateningly, but Yamadagawa immediately grabbed her arm and twisted it. Ignoring Misaki’s cries of pain, she wrenched the hagoita away and began to raise it over her own head.

“That’s enough, Yamadagawa,” Maruo said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is all Konagai’s fault. There’s no point in squabbling with Misaki.”

“The hell it’s my fault,” Konagai muttered.

Yamadagawa shrugged and tossed the hagoita away, then sat down. Misaki picked it up, said, “I’m sorry,” in a very small voice, and left the workshop.

An awkward, uneasy silence reigned over the room.

As he left for home, Konagai glanced into the inner courtyard. Misaki was standing in a corner of the garden, waving the hagoita around. Even under the shadows of the gloaming, he could see the sinew rippling on the pale arms poking out of her T-shirt.

She’s definitely got spirit, Konagai thought to himself. Anyone who lost heart after such a silly incident probably wouldn’t have had the toughness to become a ballet dancer in the first place.

Noticing Konagai watching off to the side, Misaki turned towards him, hiding her face behind the hagoita.

“My my,” she purred, “You are disgraceful, sir. Avert your prurient gaze, this nonce!”

“That’s not how you use ‘nonce’,” Konagai laughed.

　　　　　　　◯

The sun continued to slowly wend its way across the sky as Konagai mindlessly slaved away in the store. Around four in the afternoon he was beset by another wave of drowsiness, yawning as he took an expired sōmen set off the shelf and tossed it in a basket.

Switching over to the register, Konagai felt the atmosphere in the store grow noticeably tense, and he looked up to see an extraordinary hulking figure enter the store.

As Yamadagawa Atsuko had ordered, not a single hair remained on Takayabu’s gleaming, freshly shaved pate, though his beard was untouched, elevating his already intimidating presence to new heights. The contrast was even more striking for Konagai, who knew Takayabu as a diligent grad student who often could be seen tutoring younger students. Though outwardly he looked fearsome, on the inside he was sensitive and kindhearted, and Konagai had grown to like him over the previous two months.

Placing a tin of hard candies and a can of coffee on the register counter, Takayabu looked at Konagai, his face so scrunched up that it was difficult to tell whether he was smiling or weeping.

Takayabu was a senior member of a sports club that Maruo had joined, and had been chosen for this project solely due to his imposing frame. Maruo’s original rough draft had only slated Takayabu to intimidate the mark with his size, but Yamadagawa Atsuko had had other ideas during the planning sessions.

“That’s not even close to exotic enough,” she insisted. “A demonic monk would be perfect here. Picture one walking at you, chanting the Heart Sutra. That’s scary!”

“But I’m not a monk, and I don’t even know the Heart Sutra…” came Takayabu’s halfhearted rejoinder.

“Then learn it,” Yamadagawa said, in a tone that brooked no discussion. “The mark is going to meet Takayabu later in the performance, kind of like running into a boss character, right? So we need Takayabu to be really scary. Right now he has the size, but he doesn’t have the scare factor. He just, like, oozes niceness, and that’s not going to work at all.”

In the face of this verbal onslaught, Takayabu could find nothing to say.

In the ensuing silence, Yamadagawa put a finger to her lips and sank into contemplation, but she quickly came up with an image.

“Body paint,” she announced. “We’ll paint his body completely white!”

“That’s scary,” Maruo said. “Perhaps a little too scary?”

“That’s the point. We’ll paint him all white, and then have a light shining from below him...no, not a light, a torch. A demon monk painted all in white, lit with flickering torchlight. Let’s go with that!”

“I don’t know about torches, that just sounds like a fire hazard,” Konagai objected.

“Then find me some torches that won’t be a fire hazard, but just in case, don’t forget the fire extinguishers,” Yamadagawa blithely said. Takayabu and Konagai hardly had time to register their own surprise before she continued, “Oh, and Takayabu? I want to see your head shaved by Yoiyama.”

Back in the convenience store, Konagai and Takayabu nodded at each other over the counter, sharing a moment of camaraderie.

“Konagai,” Takayabu greeted him. “Shaved my head, just like I was told. What’s the verdict?”

“It cuts quite a figure. That’ll be 420 yen.”

“I thought I’d leave the beard. That shouldn’t be an issue, right? You think Yamadagawa will get mad?”

“It looks perfect. 80 yen is your change.”

“Man, I already freak out all the undergrads in my lab. This is just going to freak them out even more. I hope they don’t all skedaddle on me,” he murmured, sadly chanting the Heart Sutra as he exited the store. He seemed to have learned it by heart, as Yamadagawa had ordered him to. From behind the register, Konagai watched this magnificent figure shuffle out of the store, and pressed his hands together in silent prayer.

　　　　　　　◯

Konagai reflected on the biggest tussle he had had with Yamadagawa.

This one had been about the nagashi sōmen.

By July, Yamadagawa’s imagination was boiling over, and no one could stop her. Otogawa, the mastermind of this whole affair, was enraptured with her handiwork, and Maruo delightedly spurred her on. Yamadagawa was riding high.

After trading a few body blows, Misaki had removed herself from the fray, while Takayabu had never entered the fray in the first place. The only person capable of checking Yamadagawa from running amok was Konagai.

Yamadagawa insisted on moving Kingyohoko, her pièce de résistance, onto the roof for the climax of the performance. Always obliging, Maruo quickly secured the use of an old building on Sanjō Street. This was in fact the very building which contained the ballet studio where Misaki worked.

“We’ll build a big tatami room on the roof. At the signal, all the walls and the roof will be torn down, and we’ll get a nice breeze going. Kingyohoko will start rolling in slowly, and that will be our climax. It’s so magical I feel a nosebleed coming on!”

What with all the running around for tatami mats and sliding screens and rope and tarps (even having to call in a favor with an acquaintance on the cultural festival committee), Konagai’s patience was already stretched to its limit. And now, Yamadagawa was yammering on about running bamboo pipes through the room and having a cohort of strange men eat nagashi sōmen. It was all just so unnecessary: something had to give, and that something was Konagai’s last shred of patience.

“Nagashi sōmen, my ass! What do you need that dumb shit for!?”

“It’s not summer without nagashi sōmen! It’s supposed to be mysterious and pointless!”

“Enough already! Enough with all this useless shit!”

Yamadagawa Atsuko hurled a can of paint at him. “God, you are so useless! It’s not like I’m asking for much! I give you all these good ideas, and all you can do is complain. I’m so mad, my head’s about to explode!”

With all eyes on them, Konagai leapt at Yamadagawa, attempting to jam his fingers up her nose. She shrieked, her sharp nose twitching. “What the fuck!”

“I’ll kill you! I’ll stop up your nose so the blood pours out your ears!”

“I don’t have time for this!” Yamadagawa pleaded to Konagai, whose arms were being pinned back by Takayabu. “I won’t have a chance like this again! Please just let me do this, just this once!”

“You want to do something crazy, take it to the theater! Don’t pull me into this!”

“No one else will work with me but you!”

Even Konagai had to pause when he heard those words.

There wasn’t much of a decision to be made after that. The next day, he drove a light truck towards the bamboo forests in Rakusei, accompanied by Takayabu and Maruo. They stopped at Katsura Station to pick up Misaki, whose parents lived on a property with a bamboo thicket. Konagai complained the whole way about Yamadagawa, whose insistence on nagashi sōmen was the cause of all this, yet who was too busy with finishing up Kingyohoko to come along.

The mosquito repellent that Misaki had prepared did little to dissuade the swarms that buzzed through the thicket from feasting on the men as they sweated away cutting down bamboo.

Takayabu was especially adept at this work, which he said was due to the presence of a bamboo thicket in his hometown. On the other hand, Maruo quickly tired, as Konagai had expected, and made a big show of fleeing the mosquitoes, leaving Konagai and Takayabu to bear the brunt of the work.

“Sorry for dragging you into this,” Konagai apologized.

“Hey, I don’t mind,” said Takayabu. “You know, I’ve been thinking, you’re a pretty good guy.”

“What, you’re calling me a pushover?” Konagai growled, suddenly irritated.

“I mean, you complain a lot, and you get into all these big fights, but you still end up going the extra mile for Yamadagawa.”

“I don’t like where you’re taking this, buddy.”

“I heard from Maruo that she quit the theater group. Apparently she tried to do something really big, but no one wanted to work with her.”

Konagai stopped cutting for a moment and looked at Takayabu, who was wiping his face with a grubby towel and smiling at the dappled light filtering through the bamboo leaves.

“I didn’t know,” Konagai mumbled. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

“Too embarrassed, if I had to guess. She is a pretty egotistical person after all,” Takayabu chuckled. “But she seems to be enjoying herself now. And that’s not a bad thing at all, is it?”

　　　　　　　◯

As Yoiyama drew closer, the race to finish up all the preparations reached a fever pitch.

The club filled a wall with pinwheels and set up an array of industrial fans to spin them; they hung windchimes on the lintel of the tatami room; they fixed the gilded folding screens to seemingly automatically collapse (though this was actually done by hand); they cut and hollowed out the bamboo stems with hammer and chisel, and set up the water supply and drainage for the nagashi sōmen; they lined up lanterns and Shigaraki tanuki and lucky cats; they crafted and hung up dozens of goldfish globes; they built a cage and mikoshi to contain the mark; they decided on obtaining goldfish for the goldfish globes from the goldfish scooping booths at the festival on the day of Yoiyama; they even secured a supply of helium gas for the giant carp balloons that Yamadagawa wanted to fly in the garden.

The house that would be used to entrap the mark was largely completed, but the rooftop set that would host the climactic showdown with Lord Yoiyama remained unfinished, with but little time left before the day of the event. Building an entire tatami room was no mean feat, even with unlimited funds, and on top of that the whole edifice had to come apart in the blink of an eye.

The floor was laid with tatami mats, the perimeter lined with sliding screens, a sheet stretched over the whole affair as a ceiling, but the problem of breaking it down remained.

“We’ll just have to use raw manpower,” decided Maruo.

With the help of students enlisted from campus, the sheet ceiling could be pulled away and the screens toppled. A borrowed generator was brought up to power the lights in the room and on the float. The storerooms of Kinezuka Enterprises were emptied to fill the chamber of Lord Yoiyama with trappings of power and majesty: Hina dolls, an oak desk, innumerable kaleidoscopes, celadon porcelain plates, old lamps, glass orchids, old empty bottles of Akadama port wine, more lucky cats and Shiragaki tanuki, faded banners, folding fans; anything and everything was brought in to bedeck the room, whether or not it was authentic or substantial or relevant.

The night before Yoiyama, Konagai took Maruo along in the truck to Otogawa’s childhood home in Nara to pick up the Super Goldfish, a creepy, oversized goldfish.

“Don’t even think about falling asleep on me. Damn, thirty thousand yen doesn’t even begin to cover this job…” Konagai grumbled as he drove.

“Now, it’s a tad bit late to back out now, right? Am I right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m long past that point.”

“Ha, that’s what I like about you, you know? Yamadagawa thinks so too. Well, wake me up when we get there...”

“Dammit, don’t you dare!”

It was the wee hours of the morning by the time the truck pulled up to the building on Sanjō Street, where the crew was awaiting the arrival of the fabled Super Goldfish. They carried the water tank up to the fourth floor of the building, where they draped a cloth over it: inside the building during the heat of the day, even a Super Goldfish was no match for the sweltering rays of the sun. The Super Goldfish would be mounted on Kingyohoko just before its debut.

“Look at its face, it’s so condescending!”

“We’re sure this isn’t a real monster...right?”

After everyone was done oohing and aahing and deciding whether the brawny specimen was even still a goldfish, Yamadagawa went up to the roof to put the finishing touches on the float, while everyone else wound up loose ends back at the house. As the hours passed, Takayabu went back to his research lab, Maruo absconded for his beauty rest, and one by one the other students slipped out of the workshop.

Engrossed in the nagashi sōmen apparatus, Konagai glanced up only to find himself suddenly alone in the metamorphosed chamber. Somewhere in the house a clock was chiming four. Konagai stood up and stretched, realizing that his shift started at nine.

Misaki popped her head in a doorway. “I’m going to head home,” she announced.

“Whoa, you’re still here?”

“I guess I got really into it.”

Turning out the lights and shutting the door behind her, Misaki asked, “What do you say we check up on Yamadagawa? There were still a few things about Kingyohoko she wasn’t happy with. I bet she’s still working on the roof.”

The two walked down Muromachi Street, heading for the building on Sanjō Street and climbing to the roof.

The roof was mostly bare, the tatami and screens piled in a corner and covered with a tarp. Kingyohoko stood alone, a dim silhouette piercing the sky. Above the faint lights of the city, a hint of blue was creeping into the inky blackness of the night sky. It had stopped drizzling, and the air was cool and crisp.

Yamadagawa was dozing underneath a blanket on a sheet beneath the float.

“Aww, look. She’s fast asleep,” Misaki cooed, peering at Yamadagawa’s still figure.

“Yeah, she’s sleeping. I don’t think aww is the word I would use, though.”

“Don’t be mean, Konagai!”

“Me, mean? Surely you jest. Personally, I think I’ve been incredibly patient.”

“True, you have, but still!”

“Even if I am being mean, so what? You’re wasting your sympathy on this idiot.”

“Sir, really I must protest!”

Konagai had no qualms about calling Yamadagawa an idiot, but looking at her sleeping visage, he did feel a pang of sympathy.

　　　　　　　◯

Konagai and Yamadagawa Atsuko met during freshman year of college.

Some student theater companies achieve renown, but these are far outnumbered by groups that, far from basking in the limelight, often eschew it entirely, popping into existence and fading out just as quickly. After all, anyone can announce the formation of yet another theater company wherever and whenever they please. Konagai was never quite sure why Yamadagawa had chosen to join one of these fly-by-night companies, but he was hardly in a position to criticize, given that he had joined the same company merely on a whim.

He was equally unsure of how he had fallen into the unenviable role of being the point man for all of Yamadagawa Atsuko’s madcap schemes. In all likelihood it had happened during sophomore year, when they came into their own as lead players within the company.

Nothing pleased Yamadagawa more than building extravagant sets that overshadowed the meager material that was performed on them. At first Konagai did his utmost, but little by little he wearied of being under her thumb. Realizing her grandiose plans took money and effort, and cash in particular was not something that the members of the company had in abundance, but heedless Yamadagawa pressed on, leaving Konagai to deal with the consequences. Even austerity could only take him so far.

The impromptu theater company could be dissolved just as quickly as it had formed, and the other members all gradually lost their enthusiasm for continuing to perform under its banner. During the fall cultural festival, they staged a pop-up performance entitled “The Count of Monte Crackpot” in bits and pieces all over campus, intending it to be their last hurrah. However, the astounding reception the performance received breathed new confidence into the hitherto wavering company members, and the future of the group seemed bright.

But Konagai was done.

The roving nature of the performance should have precluded Yamadagawa from indulging in her usual penchant for fantastic sets. But she had different ideas, insisting that the climax of the show should have a spectacular backdrop, even going so far as to demand that the set be built in secret while the festival was going on. All of the performances across campus would culminate in an extravaganza on top of the engineering building, in a grotesque fortress called the Crackpot Castle in the Clouds. The tribulations that Konagai underwent in the process of realizing Yamadagawa’s vision were excruciating beyond description.

Enough was enough, he decided, quitting the company while the exuberant remaining members began to lay plans for their next performance. Yamadagawa said nothing as she watched him walk away, which Konagai took as a lack of gratitude for everything that he had accomplished.

What a piece of work, he thought to himself.

But as the months went by, Konagai began to realize that his time in the club had been the most exciting and fruitful days of his entire life. He lived for Yamadagawa Atsuko’s grueling projects. Now that he was unshackled from her, each day was dull, monotonous, devoid of motivation. He had thought that one day, he would recover from his exhaustion and return to his old self, but this had turned out to be wishful thinking.

After being finagled by Maruo into working with Yamadagawa once again, he had finally come to understand why that was. Though it pained him to admit it, he understood all too well now that Yamadagawa was the spark to his fire.

　　　　　　　◯

As the sun sank towards the horizon, people poured onto the streets for Yoiyama, more and more of them wearing yukata.

His shift finally over, Konagai stumbled through the crowd, his lack of sleep apparent in his unsteady gait. The lanterns on the floats had been lit, transforming the streets around them with their eerie glow.

“Yoiyama kinda has an aura, I guess. Maybe Yamadagawa’s freak show will work after all,” he contemplated. “Damn, but this is a lot of people.”

Not wanting to head straight to the workshop, he slowly ambled down Muromachi Street. A group of girls wearing red yukata flitted by him. Glancing up, he noticed a couple sitting on an apartment balcony above him, sipping beer and watching the crowds go by. “Man, I wouldn’t mind being up there right now,” he said to himself.

A call came from Maruo.

“Where you at, Konagai? Work all finished?”

“I’m just wandering, trying to clear my head.”

“Ah, to be young and carefree. Well, I thought you’d like to know, the nagashi sōmen tests went swimmingly. It really is a headscratcher, why it’s there at all. Let’s see, the industrial fans were strong, so strong that they blew all of the helium carp balloons away. Yamadagawa was, you know, absolutely furious!”

“Damn, what happened to the balloons?”

“Hm, I suppose they must be floating away somewhere. It’s rather unfortunate.”

“Unbelievable…”

“Anywho, don’t dawdle too long, I need you here, you hear?”

Konagai hung up but continued to walk around aimlessly anyways. Just past Minami-kannonyama, a giant clothed in the black garb of a monk stumbled out from Nishikikōji Alley. Even with the streets as packed as they were, his intense aura was unmistakable, and the crowds parted naturally around him. His intentionally unshaved bristles only added to his ferocious image. Konagai reckoned that if he were to see behemoth painted white, emerging from the light of a torch, he would probably faint too.

“Takayabu!” he called out.

“Hi, Konagai. What do you think? This monk stuff suits me pretty well, I’d say.”

“You look more like a fallen monk if you ask me.”

“I bet I live more like a monk than most monks. Abstinence, that’s me,” Takayabu said, happily showing Konagai the hand towel that he’d bought from Tōrōyama after finally being able to visit it for the first time.

“Well, better not dawdle too long. We’d best get going.”

“Yeah, but I was thinking...my part’s pretty much done anyways.”

“Don’t say that. You might as well see it through to the end, right?”

In the midst of their conversation, a little girl suddenly ran smack into Takayabu. “Oh?” he said, startled.

The girl’s expression froze when she saw him looking down at her, and she immediately backed away, tears brimming in her eyes. Before Takayabu could say anything to her, she turned and dashed away madly, disappearing into the crowd.

“Come on, I’m not that scary am I?” he muttered, sounding injured.

“She probably thought you were going to eat her up!”

“I’m really not that bad a guy, I promise!”

The two turned and walked north up Muromachi Street. Past Kuronushiyama, the festival mood was considerably tamer. They came to an empty parking lot on the left side of the street.

“Let’s see what they’re up to,” said Takayabu. They hopped the fence on the west side of the parking lot and walked through a false alleyway hemmed in by black wooden walls. They emerged in the annex of Seikitei, which had been converted into a curio shop. Maruo was inside dressed as a cagey sales clerk, having a paltry mustache affixed to his face by a girl from the makeup crew. He turned towards the two as they entered, looking rather proud of his new whiskers.

“What do you think? Dashing, eh?”

“Okay Takayabu, let’s get you painted up,” said the girl.

“Do I really have to?” asked Takayabu, becoming visibly flustered.

“Yes, you really have to. Come on, chop chop. I’ve got everything laid out in the next room.”

Konagai inspected the motion of the gold-leafed sliding screens before crossing the inner garden to the house on the north side, where the nagashi sōmen room was set up. On the second floor, countless pinwheels spun in the gale winds generated by a cluster of oversized fans. Students moved quickly between the goldfish globes hanging from the ceiling, placing newly caught fish in the bowls with swift, practiced motions. Konagai tapped on one of the globes, smiled as the fish inside darted around nimbly, and gave a satisfied nod.

At the end of the hallway, he came across a maiko gazing through a round window. She turned back to look at Konagai and fanned a large hagoita over her face to hide mouth.

“Bid thee welcome, sir,” Misaki trilled.

　　　　　　　◯

On the roof, Yamadagawa Atsuko was bossing around a gaggle of students, who ran around arranging tatami mats and bringing up odds and ends from downstairs. Some of them carried around sliding screens aimlessly. The sight of the normally drab roof covered with tatami mats was quite remarkable.

Presently, Maruo joined them on the roof.

“Say, Konagai, I hope you’ve done some practicing with the chimaki?”

Konagai grabbed Maruo’s jaw with one hand, pushed on his cheeks so that his mouth opened, and thrust the chimaki inside with lightning speed.

“Phanko, phanko!” cried Maruo, his eyes wide. After a short struggle he extricated himself and spat out the chimaki.

“How could you!” he spluttered, a spray of saliva accompanying his words. “But that was good, very good!”

“That’s how I give medicine to my dog at home,” Konagai chortled. “So? Where’s the mark?”

“At the present moment he should be meeting with Otogawa in Seikitei. Otogawa will give him the slip shortly and convene with us here.”

“If it goes according to plan.”

“Nothing to worry about, I assure you. The mark is an idiot, after all.”

“Yeah, but so are you.”

“And yourself!” Maruo said genially. He walked to the center of the roof and clapped his hands. “Attention, your attention please! Let us practice the last scene with Kingyohoko. Screens, line up there, in formation. Konagai, if you would, go and tell us how it looks from the inside.”

Konagai sat crossed-legged on the tatami mats as the screens closed up around him and the cloth was draped overhead. It wasn’t the most convincing tatami room he’d ever seen, but it wasn’t completely implausible, either. His mind began to drift as he sat in the middle of the 10-tatami room. The voices of Maruo and the others sounded oddly muffled on the other side of the screens.

A rattling sound came from a large bureau in a corner of the dim room, and Yamadagawa Atsuko came crawling out from behind it.

“The hell were you doing there?” Konagai demanded.

“Not bad, not bad,” Yamadagawa nodded to herself, plopping down beside him. “It’ll do, I guess.”

“Mm, we did work pretty hard on it. I’m completely spent.”

“Me too.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, I mean it. I couldn’t keep doing projects this big.”

“Huh. You happy with how it turned out?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“You’re not thinking about going back to the theater company?”

“No, I think I’ve done enough. Besides, it wouldn’t be the same without you there.”

Outside the screen, they heard Maruo give a muffled command. The sheet slid off the top of the room, revealing the afternoon summer sky painted with the ruddy colors of the setting sun. The screens surrounding them toppled with a great whomp, letting in the whispering evening breeze. Perhaps it was merely that his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light, but from up here on the rooftop, the town seemed to be wrapped in a wistful haze.

Directly in front of them stood Yamadagawa Atsuko’s magnum opus, Kingyohoko. Its grotesque, riotous form brought back memories of the Crackpot Castle in the Clouds, her masterwork from the previous autumn. Konagai thought about all the things he had crafted—the homemade lanterns, the goldfish swimming around inside the globes, the haphazardly scattered clotheslines wrapped in electric lights—silly contrivances, one and all, but how beautifully they would shine and sparkle in the dark when the sun went down!

Yamadagawa cried out and pointed. On top of the building across the street was a spherical water tank, and gently bumping against it was a tangled bunch of red carp balloons.

“So that’s where the carp went!”

“We should probably go grab them when they come down.”

“Hey, Konagai?”

“Yeah?”

“For the longest time, I thought that goldfish turned into koi when they grew up.”

“Well I’m afraid you were wrong about that.”

“Yeah, I guess I was.”

At the base of Kingyohoko stood a man, his arms folded as he nodded admiringly.

He made a beeline straight for the tatami mats and extended his hand to Yamadagawa to shake.

“Thank you! It’s incomprehensible, marvelous, beyond my wildest dreams!”

Yamadagawa beamed.

“What’s the verdict, Otogawa?” Maruo asked.

Otogawa responded with a vehement thumbs-up.

“Ladies and gents!” he announced. “What do you say we get out there and fool this fool!”