It was around two o’clock on the morning of October 4, 2009.
A giant kite, blown by a strong wind, was seen above the Nagoya Castle Tenshukaku Donjon. Riding on the kite was a man dressed in black with arms and legs outstretched. The kite approached the female golden shachi . “Hup,” he said and jumped down onto the donjon ridge. He was a self-styled Kinsuke Kakinoki , a shachi scale thief of the Heisei era .
Kinsuke straddled the shachi, tied one end of a rope around his waist and the other end around the tail of the shachi. Now he wouldn’t be blown off from the castle donjon. He then put down a black backpack, took out a monkey wrench and a nipper from it, and put them in the bag on the waist belt. Next he took out a flashlight and put its string around his neck so that it wouldn’t fall.
The full moon appeared from behind the dark clouds for a moment. At that instant, the golden tiger-faced fish sparkled.
Kinsuke lit the scales with the flashlight in his left hand, and put the mouth of the monkey wrench onto one of the nuts which fastened the scales. A metallic clank sounded in the dark. He tried to turn the wrench to loosen the nut, but it slipped off the nut. He tried again but in vain. He was frustrated. “Calm down. No one is looking at me,” he said to himself. He adjusted the width of the wrench mouth and put it onto the nut again. Carefully and steadily he turned it. The nut came loose. Good. He put the wrench back into the belt bag. Next he took the nipper out of the bag, pinched the scale edge, and pulled it hard.
“Ouch!”
He was surprised. He thought he had just heard someone say, “Ouch!”
“Impossible. No one is here. My ears are playing tricks on me,” he thought. He pulled the edge again.
“Ouch! What are you going to do with my scale?”
Oh my god! Does this shachi speak? Unbelievable. Kinsuke looked at the shachi’s eyes. The shachi goggled her eyes and gave him a threatening look.
Kinsuke said with his chin up, “Don’t look at me with such dirty eyes, Monster. You think you are threatening me with those big eyes, but who do you think I am. I am a Kinsuke Kakinoki of the Heisei era. It’s a big mistake if you think I will be frightened by your monstrous eyes. I am not afraid of you. However hard you may outstare me or however loudly you may cry, I will not move a muscle. I’ve come here at the risk of my own life. I will not go back without your scales. Of course, I don’t want to steal your scales, but I can’t make a living because I’m a temp worker and was fired four months ago. You are just an ornament, aren’t you? You will never know how harsh the world is without money. Now all your scales are mine. Don’t feel bad with me.”
“How stupid you are, Kinsuke!”
“Stupid? What do you mean?”
“My scales are not gold. They are coated. You can’t sell them. Don’t you know that?”
“I am fully aware of that. But, you see your coated gold amounts to 44 kilograms all together. You don’t know the current gold market price, do you? One gram of gold is worth nearly 3,000 yen. Do you understand? I’ve studied this fully. Now give up and give me all your scales.”
“No, I won’t. I am the symbol of Nagoya City. I won’t give a single scale to such a chicken thief like you.”
The shachi began to shake her body back and forth violently.
Kinsuke held his arms around the shachi’s tail tightly.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Stop that. It’s dangerous. Stop, stop shaking.”
“Fall down to the ground and break your neck,” she said.
The shachi shook her body more and more violently. Kinsuke managed to take out the monkey wrench. He struck the shachi’s head three times with all his might.
“This!” A blow. Gaaan!
“Monstrous!” Another blow. Gaaan!
“Shachi!” The final blow. Gaaan!
The female shachi fainted and stopped wiggling.
“That serves you right,” Kinsuke said.
The wind which had temporarily been calm began to blow hard. Kinsuke shivered from cold.
In two hours, Kinsuke peeled off all 126 golden scales from the shachi. He then took out three bags and three 50-meter-long ropes from his backpack. Next, he put the 42 scales into each bag and tied it at the top with the rope. He lifted the three bags down onto the ground one by one. After that, Kinsuke jumped down from the donjon ridge onto the chidori gable and climbed down to the lower roofs one after another.
The full moon was covered by heavy clouds. Kinsuke disappeared in the dark.
***
It was five twelve the next morning. The male shachi woke up reflecting the rising sun.
“Ahhh, I’ve had enough sleep. Now, I will commence my duty to guard the castle again today.”
He looked at the female shachi. He found her body was black. He wondered why it was not gold but black.
Shachi-ko was still unconscious.
“Yoo hoo, Shachi-ko, GET UP!”
She regained consciousness.
“What’s the matter with your body? It’s all black. You have no scales,” he said.
“I am sorry, Shachio-san,” she said with vexation. “But a rascal came last night and peeled off all my scales. He struck me on the head. How frustrating! My whole body hurts.”
The part where the scales were peeled off was smarting from the morning bright sunshine.
“A rascal?” he said.
“Yes, he was dressed in black. Around 30. He complained that he couldn’t make a living because he was a fired temp worker.”
“I feel sorry for him, but I can’t forgive him for hurting you.”
“Shachio-san, I think I have a fever. And my whole body is smarting hard. I can’t bear the pain,” she complained.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Shachio said.
“The sunlight is hurting my bare body like arrows. I believe if you pour some water on my body, the pain will be cured somehow.”
“Yes, it will, but where can we get clean water?” he said. “There is water in the moat, but it’s dirty. Mosquito larvae hatch there. You might suffer from tetanus.”
“Is there any place where you can get clean water?” she said.
Shachio looked down around the city with his big eyes. To the west of the castle, there stood several skyscrapers, but they had nothing to do with clean water. To the south, there were busy downtown streets of Sakae, but the streets did not supply clean water. To the east, he saw the Nagoya Baseball Dome, which was unrelated to fresh water.
“What do you see to the north, Shachi-ko?” he said.
“I see the Shonai River.”
Ah, Shonai River. That river had become very clean compared with decades ago, but not clean enough for sweetfish ayu to live in, he thought.
Shachio looked around once again. Then, he recognized something glittering to the south. It was reflecting the sun. There was clean water over there.
“I’ve found it. There is an oasis to the south. An oblong pond filled with clean water in Sakae,” he said to Shachi-ko.
“I know the oasis. It’s called Oasis 21. The water is fresh and clean. It will surely cure my pain,” she said happily.
“OK, then. Let’s go to the oasis,” he said. “But I’m afraid the water poured on your body will dry soon, won’t it?”
“Yes, it will, but that’s an oasis. There are a lot of trees. If you put big leaves on my wet body, it will have good efficacy,” she said.
“All right then, we will have to be absent from the castle for some time, but it can’t be helped. Let’s fly.”
Surprised, she said, “Let’s fly? What do you mean? Can we fly?”
“Yes, of course,” Shachio said. “Don’t you know our ancestors are the Makara. It’s a vehicular creature on which the Hindu Goddess rode. The Makara had a fish body with a
dragon head and a dolphin tail. It moved freely in the sky and water, and on the ground.”
“Oh, I see, but how do I fly?”
“It’s quite easy.” Shachio said. “You see, you have four fins. Beat them like wings and you can fly. You can’t fly a long distance, but you can fly at least as far as the east gate of the castle. From the gate, we will walk to the oasis. OK, then, I’ll show you an example. Look at me.”
Shachio beat his fins hard. Flying backward, he opened his mouth wider to let go of the edge of the castle ridge. After releasing it from his mouth, he flew to Shachi-ko, and encouraged her to fly. She beat her fins hard.
“Good, that’s the spirit,” Shachio said. “No, no. Faster, faster. OK. Open your mouth wide and fly backward. Release the ridge. Good. Wonderful! Now let’s fly to the east gate. Use your tail fluke to steer.”
Shachio and Sachi-ko flew to the east gate safely and landed on the ground just outside the gate. It was seven o’clock in the morning.
***
The Shachi couple put down their tail flukes on the ground and began to walk slowly on their stomachs using their pectoral and abdominal fins. They came to Ohtsu-dori Street. No one was there. Shachio said,
“If we walk along this street about 30 minutes…, oh, do you see the Nagoya TV tower over there? The oasis is just below the tower.”
“You know the geography of the Sakae area very well,” Shachi-ko said.
“Yes, I do, because, you know, I always look southward on the donjon while you look only northward,” Shachio said.
“That’s right. By the way, doesn’t it smell bad around here?” Shachi-ko said with knotted brows.
“Yes, it’s car exhaust. Since it is morning now, the smell is not so bad, but during the daytime, I’m afraid the smell becomes awful,” Shachio said.
They reached the entrance of City Hall Subway Station. A middle-aged man appeared from the entrance, saw two Shachi before his eyes, and was surprised.
“Oh god! Golden Shachi in front of me!” the man said to himself. “Don’t surprise me early in the morning. Why are they here? Well, maybe I’m dreaming a bad dream. I drank too much last night. It must be a hallucination.”
He walked away shaking his head in disbelief.
The couple saw the City Hall building in front of them on the left across the crossing. They began to cross it obliquely. All the vehicles screeched to a halt. There was a smell of burning tires. The drivers watched the Shachi couple as if they were watching Martians.
The couple crossed the crossing safely and walked slowly along the street in front of the City Hall. An old couple were waiting for a bus at the bus stop in front of the city hall building. They saw the Shachi and were thunderstruck. The old woman was paralyzed with shock. The old man stood strait and stiff with his eyes wide open.
“Unbelievable! They are Shachi, aren’t they?” they cried.
When they approached the Aichi Prefectural Government building, Shachi-ko abruptly coughed hard.
“Shachio-san, I can’t breathe well. The air is so polluted. My gills are swollen,” Shachi-ko said.
“That’s too bad, but we will soon reach the oasis. I’ll wash your gills with clean water. Then, they will recover. So, hang on,” he said. Actually, however, his gills began to swell, too.
The street was crowded with more and more bikes, trucks, passenger cars, buses and all kinds of vehicles. An ambulance was making it through the flooded street, lights flashing and siren roaring. The couple suffered from the ear-splitting noise and exhaust gas.
They came to a Circle K convenience store near Ohtsubashi Bridge. Out of the store appeared a little girl and her mother. The mother was so surprised to see them that she couldn’t speak, and dropped her shopping bag. The little girl innocently talked to them.
“Shachi-san, where are you going?”
“Ah, Little Girl, we’re going to Oasis 21 in Sakake,” Shachio answered.
“Why?”
“Why? Because there is clean water and a lot of trees there. Look at this Shachi,” he said and turned to his wife, Shachi-ko. “Her body hurts because a thief peeled all her scales off. If we pour clean water on her body and cover it with leaves, we can cure her.”
“What? Clean water? No, no, you can’t get any clean water there. The water is far high above your head. Besides, no trees are growing, either. So there are no leaves. That’s a shopping mall,” the little girl said looking into his big eyes.
“No way. You are a little child. So, I’m afraid you don’t know the meaning of an oasis. It is a place where water springs up from under the desert. So there are a lot of trees around it,” Shachio said.
“But it’s a shopping mall,” the girl said.
“No, it’s not. I can see an oblong clean pond from the top of the castle donjon.”
“But it’s not….”
Shachio heard his wife, Shachi-ko, panting heavily. He thought they had to start right away.
“Dear Little Girl, sorry, we have to hurry. Good bye,” he said, and they left the girl and her mother.
The shachi couple began to walk as quickly as possible along the street under high buildings. People began to gather around them. They began to talk.
“Look! A couple of shachi are walking.”
“Which is the male and which is the female?”
“My! Is there a difference? They look the same.”
“I know how to distinguish them. The male shachi is six centimeters taller than the female.”
“I didn’t know that. But where are they heading, I wonder.”
A high school girl approached Shachio and took a two-shot picture with her cell phone. “Hi, Cheese.” Click. Then, some of the crowd began to take pictures of Shachio. Others took two-shot pictures, too. Click! Click! Click! No one dared to take a picture with Shachi-ko.
The couple came to Hisaya-Ohtsu-Dori Subway Station. They saw the TV tower on their forward left side. They would soon reach the oasis. Their pain became worse and worse with dirty air and sharp sunlight. They walked with their chests heaving in air. They pushed their way among the obstructing, noisy crowd.
Now, they reached Sakae Subway Station. There stood a Ferris wheel on their right. From among the crowd, a young man in black leather jumper approached Shachio. A golden dolphin earring was hanging down from his left ear. He had dyed his hair golden.
Golden Hair said in a gentle voice, “Shachi-san, may I ask a favor of you?”
Shachio said panting, “I’m sorry, but we are in a hurry.”
“Please listen to my story while you are walking. It will take only a minute.”
“OK, then, but please be brief.”
“Thank you. Actually my mom had a traffic accident yesterday and was hospitalized,” he said in a tearful voice. “But you know, I can’t afford to pay the hospital expenses.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“So, I know it very rude, but could you spare me some of your scales? The golden scales will help my mother.”
Golden Hair bowed his head low politely.
Shachio looked at Shachi-ko. She said sympathizing with his story,
“Why not give him a few scales if they could help his mother.”
“If you say so,” Shachio said, and shook his weakened body hard, dropped two scales of his, and gave them to the poor young man.
Golden Hair’s expression changed suddenly. He became furious and said,
“Oh, boy, only two scales? Only two? Are you taking me for a fool? Hey, boys, kick ass on the shachi.”
Three brown-haired boys, who were all about 15 years old and armed with spanner wrenches, jumped out of the crowd at Shachio. They pushed him down. Golden Hair climbed on him and began to peel the scales violently while the boys held him tightly. Shachio had little power to resist them. Nobody in the crowd extended a helping hand to Shachio. Looking at her husband being attacked, Shachi-ko was panting desperately and shedding tears. Nishiki-Dori Street fell into chaos.
Soon TV cameramen and newspaper reporters came to the site. They were too absorbed in taking pictures and covering the incident to help the shachi couple. One of the cameramen even climbed Shachi-ko’s head and took video tapes of Shachio and the robbers.
Twenty minutes later, the gang peeled all 112 scales off from Shachio’s body. No one dared to take pictures of Shachio or Shachiko, the ugly, weird, and grotesque monsters.
The incident was broadcast on the NHK TV news at eight o’clock. The two black fish were on TV screen in close-up.
Soon the couple turned to the left in the crowd at Sakura-Dori-Otsu crossing with a more dead than alive condition. The curious mob followed them. Shachio was making the schlepp, clenching his jaw, enduring pain, and always looking after Shachi-ko. They saw the Aichi Arts Center ahead and a giant oblong structure on their left.
“We’ve made it at last, Shachi-ko. That’s the oblong building I see from the donjon,” Shachi said, but at the same time, he wondered why the oblong structure was in the air. From the top of the donjon about 1.8 kilometers away, the oasis looked as if it were on the ground.
Soon both Shachio and Shachi-ko began gasping for air and coughing harder than before. Now, they became so weak that they hardly had power to utter even a word. They desperately wanted to wash their bodies with fresh water as soon as possible. The sunlight was relentlessly beating down on them. Their bodies were burning. They wanted to have their bare bodies covered with leaves. Their eyes got foggy and hazy and could not see clearly.
They put forth their final effort and managed to reach the foot of the high oblong structure.
“This should be Oasis 21,” Shachio thought.
There was no water.
There were no trees, either.
“Something is wrong,” Shachio thought. He looked down from the ground level at the underground plaza built in atrium. He saw down there a pond full of blue water with white ripples. He was delighted to find it. “Shachi-ko, there is water down there! If we go there, we can get as much water as we want,” he said. He found on his right a gentle slope that led down to the pond.
The couple went down the slope step by step followed by the noisy curious crowd. Fancy shops were surrounding the pond. But when they came nearer to the pond, they saw tables and chairs on the water. People were walking on it, too. They thought it strange. They looked at the blue pond carefully, only to find that the blue water was the color of the shopping plaza floor. The concrete floor was covered with 30-centimeter square blue iron nets. There were a few white ones among them.
They reached the floor of the plaza with a disappointed heart. There were no water, trees, or flowers. There were only a few token flower pots here and there. That was an inorganic space. What the little girl at Ohtsubashi Bridge said was true. No, no, you can’t get any clean water there. The water is far high above your head. Besides, no trees are growing, either.
Shachio looked up. He saw various-sized grey iron frames and pipes, some more than two meters and others around 50 centimeters in diameter, intricately woven with one another. They supported a gigantic and monstrous oblong spaceship with the major axis of about 100 meters long. The huge oblong monster overshadowed the sky and overwhelmed the Shachi couple. The clean water on the spaceship glass vessel threw flickering dull shadow on the blue plaza floor.
There was water about 20 meters high above their heads, but how could they reach it? The shachi couple abandoned themselves to despair. They could hardly walk. Shachiko was gasping much harder and her eyes had turned white.
Suddenly Shachi-ko’s tail twitched and she fell on the floor on her back. The crowd was surprised and became quiet. She mumbled a few words.
Shachi-ko said in a feeble voice, “Shacho-san, I can’t breathe any more…I have to say good-bye to you now.”
At that instance, a TV camera zoomed in her face. The TV reporter pointed a big microphone at her and asked a question.
“Excuse me, but you’ve just said, ‘I have to say good-bye to you.’ Are you going to go somewhere?”
Shachio wanted to hit the reporter with his tail with all his might.
Shachiko gasped out,
“Shachio-san, we first met each other in 1959, just 50 years ago…. Our predecessor Shachi burned down in the war, you know. We were born in the Osaka Minting Authority…. I have always been proud of you on the top of the Castle donjon…. Do you remember the previous day of the Osaka Expo? We were separated from each other that day, and each of us was taken to a parade around Osaka City…. Except for that event, we have always been together for the past 50 years, haven’t we? But now, I am sorry I have to separate from you....”
“Oh, please, Shachiko, don’t say such a sad thing.”
Shachio’s eyes were filled with tears. Shachiko shed tears.
“Shachio-san, I am sorry that my scales have been peeled off, but now I don’t care. If the scales can help the temp worker, it is all right with me. To tell you the truth, I wanted to guard the castle for at least 100 years with you.”
“Me, too,” Shachio said. He also had difficulty in breathing.
“Thank you, Shachio-san, for everything. I’ll go first.”
“I’ll join you soon there.”
When Shachiko heard his words, she sighed with relief. Her eyes slowly closed. Her gasping gradually became weaker and weaker and weaker until at last ….
“SHACHI-SAN! Water and leaves!”
A girl’s voice resonated all over the Oasis 21 structures. Water splashed over Shachiko’s body. Another splash, and another. She was the girl the Shachi couple met in front of the convenience store at Ohtsubashi Bridge. She came to rescue them with her parents. They had been watching the TV program, and had driven to the oasis with buckets of water and leaves. Her father opened a cardboard box and grasped green leaves with both hands and put them on her body.
When Shachio watched her being cured, he felt relieved and fell on his back.
Suddenly the crowd dispersed in all directions. Some rushed to vending machines to buy plastic bottles of water; others went to the park at the foot of the TV tower to get leaves; still others went back to their homes to get water and leaves from their gardens. Restaurant clerks returned to their shops to get some water; and a florist returned to his shop to get big green leaves.
In 15 minutes, both Shachio and Shachiko had plenty of water and leaves all over their bodies. Their gills were cleaned. They came back to life. The Nagoya people saved the Shachi couple. The details of the incident were broadcast on TV and the radio and reported in the newspapers.
***
The early next morning found three black bags at the east gate of Nagoya Castle. The stolen scales were in the bags. At the front gate were also three bags containing scales. Inside one of them was a golden dolphin earring.
On New Year’s Day in 2010, the golden Shachi killer whales shone brightly reflecting the first sun rays of the year.
The end
