“Tohru! Wake up or you’ll be late for school again!
Tohru Nakajima stirred in his sleep. Jolted awake after the fourth loud knock on his door. His eyes wanted to close bavk down, fall right back to sleep, not worried about anything. About missing school. About his math homework. About the convention. The convention. That was today. He sat, bolt upright. Drool streaking from his mouth made the papers stick to his face. The heavy fog of sleep lifted from his mind and his body followed suit. He peeled the paper from his face and slipped on his uniform, a nice albeit wrinkly buttoned-up, a striped tie with his high school’s colors, and a pair of dark almost dress pants. They felt way too used for his liking, practically feeling like he slept in his uniform. Which wasn’t an inaccurate statement. Particularly during his teachers’ long ramblings going on and on about something would put an insomniac to sleep. Smelling his shirt, it was getting apparent he needed to wash them.
No time, unfortunately. There never was enough time.
Tohru went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and tried to fix his unruly black hair, tangled in fine curls. Granny said they were just like his father’s at that age. Tohru just hoped his inherently messy hair wouldn’t get a scolding from his teachers, especially by Mr. Kamikura the gym teacher who had a fondness for chewing up students who didn’t meet up with the school’s strict guidelines on dress and appearance and happily spat them out. “Delinquents” as he called the students who tried new hair styles, hair dye, or not wear their ties were his favorites to yell at like his best friend Yamato Shimazaki. Tohru thought his appearance didn’t warrant a scolding, maybe it was his own bias or it could have been the fact the gym teacher has it out for him.
He shrugged in the mirror. Whatever, he thought, I look good enough. As he walked down the hall, he could see his grandmother setting down breakfast on the table; a few pieces of toast, a bowl filled with steamed rice, grilled fish, and another bowl of her famous miso soup. Whatever she did to that soup made all other soup in Tokyo taste like slightly better hot swamp water. Okay, maybe not as bad as he made it out to be, but he’d take her miso any day. She was sitting at the table with his older brother, Katsu, in a brief conversation before his attention turned to the television screen. Granny Aoi shook her head dismissively, clear annoyance written in her wrinkled face, before she used her chopsticks to eat her rice.
Granny looked like many older women looked to Tohru, grey with age, fashion, and wisdom. She always wore a grey silk kimono with a silver flower belt, and her hair, once a beautiful black now a stark white with greying streaks tied in a neat flawless bun with not the slightest out of placed hair to be seen. Wrinkles decorate her face, more looking like a raisin than prune, her features were aged by years of having to raise her grandchildren on her own with slight help from the neighbors. She was still beautiful for her age, like a court lady from a bygone era.
As she sat and ate, she looked towards Tohru approaching and joined her at the table on his seat. “My, didn’t you sleep in this morning,” Granny remarked. The way she said it would have sounded snide and rude to a stranger, but there was no venom in her words. Quite the opposite, she gave her grandson a kiss as she filled his bowl for him.
“I was working on my project for the science convention,” said Tohru. “I think we have a chance this year. Our invention is almost ready according to Mr. Takaguchi, Miss Himari even said he’s just about done with Jag–”
Tohru was cut off due to a loud explosion on the TV. They turned to see Katsu’s eyes were glued to the screen.
“Katsumoto!,” Granny scolded him, using his dreaded full name. “What have I told you about watching those horrid news shows at breakfast?”
“In a minute,” Katsu replied dismissively.
Granny huffed and resumed eating her rice.
Katsu and Tohru were the polar opposites of each other in every way. Tohru was skinny and geeky, unable to lift anything heavier than a box full kf clothes, Katsu was muscular, built for the many hours of hard labor thanks to his job at the construction company. Tohru was shy and awkward while his brother was cheery and friendly to everyone he met. However the most fundamental difference between the two was Katsu’s, for whatever the gods of the infinite universe reason as to why, unyielding devotion and obsession with Kaiju.
Since the infamous night of Godzilla’s Raid, Kaiju have been steadily appearing all across the world for over half a century. Why they had suddenly come to be was anyone’s guess. If Katsu’s Kaiju Groupie page on this blogging site was to be believed, the most popular theory was that Kaiju were the first gods, the ones who inspired the legends of mankind, from an age long before the dinosaurs, when the earth was more radioactive. These monsters fed on it until the shifting climate changed and the radiation levels began to dwindle and had driven them into hibernation. Not helped was the abundance of nuclear weapons tests over the years, pollution, and general human foolishness had awakened these creatures from millennias long slumbers to wreak havoc or cause modern day animals, plants, insects and more to mutate. Some of the crazier theories these bloggers had come up with were simply out of this world, and some even said as such. Some theorized they were from ancient civilizations like the Lost Continent of Mu or Atlantis, coming from outer space to conquer the Earth. And Katsu absorbed it all like a sponge.
He grew up hearing the stories of Godzilla, being mesmerized by how an animal like that could exist in the modern era and could be virtually indestructible to all conventional means. People thought he had issues, kids teased and bullied him for liking the dribble they were being told. But Katsu didn’t care. He would go to all these rallies for Kaiju preservation hosted by a radical animal rights organization called S.C.A.L.E., attending protests to Nato meetings regarding the rights to these “animals”. And they weren’t alone in believing that the Kaiju should not be completely exterminated. Governments within Nato had varying solutions to the ever-growing surge of Kaiju awakenings. Katsu wasn’t a fan of their solutions, not that they would result to killing these horrific monstrosities, there had been cases in the past 60 years where militaries had succeeded in killing them, but these “Monarch fools” as he would call them tried to confine them all in one spot in the middle of nowhere.
It was barbaric to Katsu. Inhumane.
For Tohru on the other hand some things, even the cruelest methods, were better alternatives than letting them roam where they could cause mass destruction and kill hundreds of millions of lives.
His attention was on the TV now. It was an early morning news report of one of these Kaiju attacks, off the coast of California. The headlines at the bottom of the screen were as dramatic and corny as they could get reading “Horror from the Deep Surfaces?!” yet the images on TV warranted it. The news anchor, a pretty lady wearing a woman’s business suit, was showing footage taken from a civilian’s phone of a ginormous lobster, as bright red as red could be. Water ran down the giant spikes along the lobster’s armoed shell as it rose, standing at least 80 meters in height and even three times that in length from where the person’s camera was pointing. The person filming was speaking in a very loud English voice, disbelief followed by cursing as the kaiju slowly approached the beach before the three American Apache helicopters swooped into frame and launched missiles, streaking towards the monster before exploding in a fireball. The smoke cleared. It did nothing. The lobster made a creaking roar, antennae twitching in anger, before it raised its pincers, one bigger than the other, to defend itself from the hail of missiles and now bullets firing at the creature. Tracers whizzed and bounced off the shell harmless, fading after making brief contact.
“This newest Kaiju, dubbed by the internet which later was adopted by the UN’s Counter Kaiju Bureau as Ebirah, had made landfall at ten past noon, eastern standard time in America over three days ago,” the pretty news anchor explained, her head off to the side as the lobster known as Ebirah screeched and swung the larger pincer at a helicopter, tearing its tail away from the body and spinning out of control. “According to official UN sources, it’s believed to be an ancient, deep sea species of crayfish, awoken after an oil rig had disturbed its long slumber while drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The American armed forces mobilized immediately after the creature was spotted surfacing to attack fishing boats. As of right now no survivors have been identified. Despite the evacuation order, casualties inflicted by the kaiju are estimated to be around only a few hundred civilians. Thankfully, more destruction was averted thanks to a tranquillizing agent being delivered by the military that had put the creature into a state of hibernation. This will be the third confirmed attack on United States, following the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption and the ’98 New York attack which experts continue claims to be another Godzi–”
The TV beamed to black. Katsu turned to his grandmother, who was holding the remote. “Granny, I was watching that! What gives?” He made an effort not to raise his voice at her but the indignation was blatant on his face.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Granny scolded. “Watching and reading about such dribbled nonsense! Why, those news channels only talk about other people’s misfortune regarding those horrid monstrosities and do nothing but fill their pockets with blood money. I raised you better than…this!” She gestured to the now-blackened TV screen.
Katsu snorted. Tohru watched his brother rise from his seat on the couch. He tried to finish his breakfast quickly to avoid the inevitable fight. He knew for certain this would not end well for either of them.
“First of all,” Katsu Started. “This is not “dribbled nonsense”, as you put it, Grandma. These news stations keep the public informed about the ever-growing frequency of Kaiju landfalls. They have credible sources, scientific evidence about where they come from, their physiology, their strengths, their weaknesses, and what to do if any of them decided to rise out of the damn sea or under our feet. How else do you think we know how many tons of steel and concrete the government poured into making those Anti-Kaiju Bunkers all over the country?” He almost chuckles as he continues, Tohru cringing visibly. “And second, it keeps some people who still fear an impending threat that’ll never come if you keep your heads under the sand from being ignorant to the fact that giant monsters are real. Maybe if you would take a little time out of your day and learn an actual thing or two about Kaiju, you’d be ready like the rest of us!”
Granny slowly rose from her seat. The chair made a resonating scraping noise. Katsu was taller than his grandmother. He appeared to be taller than both his brother and grandmother standing on each other’s shoulders. But then there was that stare. That death glare so famous and infamous in their household Tohru couldn’t look away from her back and focus on his breakfast, eating it hastily. It had to do with how her eyes were hooded by her brow, how the angle and the shadow over them made her look more sinister than she was portraying. And that look. That combination of disgust and disappointment on her face was clear as the morning sun.
“Let me tell you something, Katsumata,” calm was her tone, eyeing her grandson who was beginning to regret challenging her authority. “I was there that night when Godzilla attacked Japan all those years ago. I know what a kaiju looks like, up close and first hand, and let me tell you, boy, I don’t think you’d want to know what its really like. Don’t think these DEMONS are some new pets men can domesticate like some pussy cat. They are monsters, plain and simple. I thank God for the life I have now with my friends and family alive today, but may the universe be kind to fools who worship false gods!”
Katsu gulped sharply. Through her speech, he had made an effort to avert his eyes from looking directly into hers, like the hypnotic stare of a mongoose about to strike. It was the funny part about Granny Aoi. All she had to do was look at you and that was it, followed by the slightest raising of her voice, then she would have complete control of the situation. Reminded him of the time he had gotten in trouble with the police when he was in his first year of high school. He doesn’t remember what he did to warrant their attention but according to Granny, he was trespassing and subsequently vandalizing condemned government property that was scheduled to be demolished that month. Granny explained further that this particular building was a former animal lab that did tests for pharmaceutical companies, his younger self had to go snooping around the old building to find anything that would have incriminated the companies and tag the walls in graffiti.
Katsu felt he wouldn’t have done it, or would go that far, however, he wasn’t surprised he did it either.
The police caught and subsequently took him and his three friends to the station for questioning. Those same three friends then ratted him out as the ringleader, saying it was his idea to tag the walls with profane artwork. At the stations, they had called in his grandmother and father, who hadn’t yet passed on, to inform them of what happened. And needless to say, Granny Aoi was furious. However it was the way she expressed her anger was what baffled everyone, even today over ten years later Katsu hasn’t the faintest idea of how she can talk down to the officers for believing the story of a group of wayward teenagers, who were so close to getting no charges whatsoever, for pinning all the blame on one person.
That didn’t mean he was getting off scot-free either. Granny gave him the full nine yards as well, scolding him for stupidly going along with those boys who would throw him under the bus and call him a “friend”. According to her, the fact that they did such defamation of his character so fast was beyond a doubt that they were never his friends to begin with. He was a fool to believe their honey-soaked lies, she told him, that real friends don’t cover up each other’s actions and blame some poor sap who just happened to be there. All these words stung Katsu at the time, trying to avert his eyes away from hers like he was now, trying to get the support of his father, to get him to tell her to be easy with the boy, that he was young and couldn’t see reason yet. But his father abandoned his plea for help from the verbal reprimand. He rarely got involved with the way she disciplined her grandchildren.
But not this time. Katsu stood his ground.
He was a grown man, an adult. He wasn’t some ignorant child anymore who could be scolded and berated by an old woman.
“How can they be false if they’re as real as you or me, Granny?” Katsu said in a quiet tone. “And I don’t worship them, as you seem to believe. Now, I gotta take Tohru to school before I have to go to work.”
Granny only gave him that iconic stare of hers. One coming from a source of disappointment. “So you found a well-paying job after you were fired from the construction company.”
“It’s volunteer work,” he replied. “I’m working for an animal rights organization now.”
“You mean a bunch of terrorists who make threats on international television and blow up government-owned property or any place holding a kaiju?”
“They are not–” Katsu made a loud groan, walking past Granny and the dining table where Tohru, who had finished his breakfast, had made an effort to not get involved. He was given a hard pat on the shoulder and told they would be leaving in a few minutes. And with that, he got his shoes on and the apartment door slammed shut.
Tohru and his Grandmother sighed audibly in unison.
“I’m sorry about his behavior, Granny,” Tohru said, getting out of his seat just as his grandmother was sitting back down in hers. “Big Bro Katsu gets like this when his beliefs are challenged.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Granny rubbed her eyes under her glasses. “He’s a good boy with a big heart, just like your father, but he is stubborn as a mule. I don’t understand half the nonsense he rants about. And this S.C.A.L.E. group he’s with, and that leader of theirs. I keep telling him not to believe anything that comes out of that woman’s mouth.”
“I’m with you,” he replied. “She crazy, but Katsu thinks it’s a noble cause.”
“A madman’s cause.”
Tohru didn’t respond to the comment, but couldn’t help but agree with her statement. Instead, in an attempt to change the subject, he pulled a piece of paper out of his bag and handed it to her.
“What’s this?”
“It’s a parental permission slip,” Tohru explained. “I need you to sign it so I can go to Osaka for a few days with my club.”
She took her glasses off and replaced them with her reading ones. It was a permission slip from Mr. Tanaka, Tohru’s homeroom teacher, asking for the written consent of a parent or guardian for the student in question to be absent from school.
“A bit late to be showing me this,” she commented. “Says here you’ll be leaving with your club today.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I had to wait for my homeroom teacher to go over it, then get it approved by the school counselor and then the principal.”
“Seems like an awful lot of headaches to me,” Granny made a finger gesture, prompting Tohru to hand her over his spare pen as she wrote her name on the line. “This says here you’ll be joining a Goro Otaki at his science expo as junior technicians. You don’t mean that old cook who owns and runs that mechanic shop in Minato, the crazy one who believes in aliens and has that lazy eye?”
It was an apt description for one of Japan’s leading experts in robotics and cybernetics. Mr. Goro Otaki, better known as simply Mr. O, was a fellow survivor of the 1954 attack and since then has devoted his entire life to, as he puts it, “protecting the Earth”. And he did that with a grin showing his very pronounced bottom square teeth that showed a gaping cavern where he had no front teeth to speak of. According to Mr. O, depending on what his mood that day was, how he lost them while playing a Canadian sport called hockey and “bit too hard on the puck”, or he lost them after a rival punched him so hard after losing on a contract deal his teeth flew out of his mouth.
The man was a certified genius. Often eccentric and some claim insane but brilliant nonsense. Through his company Otaki Factory, he has developed engineering tools for almost every tech mogul in the world. From anti-virus software to cost-effective rocket ships that use less fuel to go up into space. He has contributed the most to the UN’s Counter Kaiju Directive, but he says he’s not allowed to talk about it despite hinting that he may have had a hand in developing a few things like the Maser tanks use by the Self-defense, and a little thing he liked to call Super X-1. He probably had a net worth of billions in American dollars. But you wouldn’t have guessed it just by his appearance and his company’s headquarters, a small, rundown repair and autobody mechanics shop right by the beach.
“The place keeps me honest,” he’d once told Tohru. “Reminds me that no matter the numbers in my bank account, I must strive to live modestly.”
Tohru had worked with the old man for a year as an apprentice learning how to program the robots’ movements. It served as an academic opportunity and an experience his high school could not afford to teach him by traditional means. He had learned to speak and write English from him and what wires should connect to where, although his skills weren’t up to par with the old man. No one on Earth likely was to be on his level.
“I’m surprised the old coot is still alive,” mused Granny. “Figured he’d blow himself up trying to invent a spaceship or giant robot like he’s always wanted.”
“You know Mr. O?”
Granny chuckled as she signed the papers. “I suppose all old people know each other in some way. We used to date. Didn’t work out but we’ve kept in touch, I hear he’s got a pair of cute granddaughters your age.”
Tohru tried to hide his blatant blush and scratched his head embarrassed. “Well, you know…I don’t know them that well, I’ve only met them once or twice in their grandfather’s shop.”
“Whatever the case, I hope you behave yourself on this trip. I don’t want to get a phone call from Goro Otaki that you’ve said something or did anything stupid or worse blown up.” Before Tohru could protest, Granny Aoi slipped him the permission note with her signature at the bottom line. “There. Signed, sealed, and sent. Hand this to your homeroom teacher before you go to Osaka. I trust you’re packed up?”
Tohru nodded, “Yes, Granny. Everyone’s luggage is already with Mr. O. Saying he’s bringing the company camper for the long drive.” He quickly glanced at the clock and his eyes went wide. “Crap, I’m going to be late! Katsu is probably in the parking lot now waiting for me.”
“Get going,” Granny smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Call me as soon as you get to Osaka or at the very least when you’re on your way. You know how you make your poor grandmother worry.”
“I will. Bye, Granny!” Tohru gave his grandmother a kiss on the cheek, took his bag, and was straight out the door.
The apartment fell quiet. She hated that kind of quiet, the silence of loneliness creeping in like that of a dark storm cloud. It wasn’t a matter of her not being able to take care of herself, Granny Aoi could make do on her own with no sweat. And she wasn’t entirely alone in the complex. Mrs. Inugawa and her son Shosuke would always come over to chat and have a cup of tea and gossip about the neighbors.
It was fear that made her feel such dread when home alone. She feared for Katsu the most, good-natured at heart but his mind was clouded by his obsession with these Kaiju. Perhaps he should do something foolish, she lamented, let him get caught by the police or the government, let him learn that there are consequences to his actions, how one can’t live their life following one’s desires so recklessly. But that would be foolish of her as well to think such nonsense.
She turned to the pictures hanging on the wall.
Photographs are like windows in time, a journalist once said during an interview on morning TV, and sometimes we like to look through these windows to see exact moments in time, often to see those cherished memories or the horrible memories of tragedies past. Granny figured if pictures were windows through time itself, she figured her wall was one giant glass door. Pictures of the boys when they were smaller going to their first days of kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school. Of birthday parties with strawberry shortcakes. New years eve festivals where the boys wore their father’s and uncle’s montsuki and fishing out giant goldfish with paper nets and winning prizes. Her wedding photos with her late husband.
Granny Aoi couldn’t help but gaze at the photos of Katsu the most and think to herself: how did this sweet boy grow up to be so diluted?
TO BE CONTINUED ON PAGE 3