Loups-Garous (18 page)

Hinako then squirreled up and looked up at Shizue.

It was a look beseeching approval of her response.

This occult-obsessed young girl probably thought it would be useless to tell Shizue the kind of incense and therefore chose the most uncomplicated answer.

If Shizue had to ask what the smell was, then the particulars of why Hinako bought the particular incense would be lost on her. However, one could say Hinako's choice of incense was very well informed. Shizue didn't know varieties of incense. She wouldn't know any complicated incense names. Besides, she wouldn't know to ask. Hinako's choice was perfectly appropriate indeed.

This smells like my mother.

Shizue probably had it all wrong. It was just a thought.

Shizue had gone to what was called a funeral for the first time in her life four years ago. There, she'd smelled incense for what was probably the first time in her life as well.

She couldn't be sure of the exact smell, if it was powdered or stick incense, but it was certainly the smell of the air she breathed on the occasion of her mother's funeral, and it was an air she had not breathed since.

Therefore.

No. I must be mistaken.

That couldn't be. Shizue chased worthless anguish out of her head. She tried to focus on what she could see instead of smell.

Hinako's room was monochrome, as was Hinako herself.

There were no elaborate designs.

There were piles of discs around her desk, books lined up systematically. None of them had been published recently. They were of the scant remaining old volumes that hadn't ever been digitized. It didn't seem appropriate for a fourteen-year-old. They were probably very expensive.

“I didn't realize you liked incense.”

“It's calming. I don't tolerate perfumes and volatile man-made fragrances well. Do you hate it?”

“I don't hate incense. It's as you say—calming,” Shizue said, and Hinako made a strange face.

“Strange.”

It wasn't a response, but Hinako's gaze shifted to Shizue's bag. Shizue caught on. People probably associated her directly with the disinfectant wipes she carried around with her everywhere.

“I don't like filth or anything, but I actually can't stand the smell of antiseptics. I'd sooner smell smoke.”

Hinako looked like she sort of understood but not really.

“I said this in the beginning, but…” Shizue tried to rein in the conversation from this tangent. “This isn't an official visit, so if you refuse to talk to me I will go. Please don't hesitate to tell me now. I did go ahead and ask your parents for permission to speak with you today.”

Forcing an interrogation of a minor could be considered violence in certain cases.

That was why you always had to speak with a guardian whenever you were interviewing them, to gain consent from the subject. If anything happened as a result of a direct conversation with the subject, regardless of their consent, the meeting became inadmissible as evidence.

Still, as a counselor, Shizue was in a position to insist upon an interview, and in this case, legal enforcement would creep up out of nowhere if guardians refused, no matter how unofficial the interview request.

Hinako's parents seemed perplexed, and though they'd approved the interview, it was impossible to know what Hinako was thinking.

“What do you want?” Hinako asked.

“Huh?”

Shizue was caught off guard.

“Please go home. I don't want to talk.”

Shizue had been prepared for that response somewhere in her mind.

No, she'd even been anticipating it.

“Is there a problem? Was there some trouble with the paperwork?”

“Yes, there is. There
is
a problem. Even if this is a personal visit, I don't like that it's being recorded.”

“I wanted to consult with you privately about something,” Shizue said.

“Consult…me.”

“Well, yes. I have a question for you.”

“That's weird.”

Hinako sagged the celluloid-like skin between her eyebrows, fogging her features. “A counselor, learning from a child…”

“Yes.”

Shizue slackened her shoulders.

This was obviously a way of gaining the respect and trust of her counterpart, but it was also a means for Shizue to get over her confusion. Shizue had a lot of reservations about coming to this interview.

“Is it strange?”

“Isn't it? Usually it's the other way around.”

“Really? I don't think so. You learn about topics you don't know much about by questioning people who do. I want to ask something of someone who knows a lot about it—that's not particularly strange.”

“I'm…a minor,” Hinako said.

She was still looking at Shizue's bag.

“Age has nothing to do with this. People who've lived longer don't necessarily know more. I get lectured once a week on statistics by one of my kids.”

“But I don't have anything I can teach you.”

“What about the mantic arts?”

She had to start somewhere.

It was still a difficult subject to ask about.

“How do the mantic arts work?”

Her motives had to be so blatant.

Sure enough, Hinako dropped her shoulder, disappointed.

“Are you suggesting that my hobbies and tastes are ill-advised? In that case as in the past, counseling—”

“Look, that's not what I'm here for. What I'm asking is…are your mantic arts always right?”

What kind of question was that?

Shizue was once again disgusted with herself.

“Right?” Hinako's brow furrowed.

“Yes. No offense, but there are not many people who believe in mantic arts in this day and age. I mean, all kinds of people did before my time.

Mantic arts were extremely popular. There were even on-air broadcasts.

Astrologists on, every day.”

“That's not mantic arts.”

Hinako darted a sharp glare at Shizue.

Shizue jumped. Hinako had never spoke out like that before. Not once…

“What do you mean it's not mantic arts?”

“It's different.”

Hinako adjusted her seat. “Information obtained in such stupid ways…to make predictions. They cannot be trusted. Am I right?”

“Yes. There was a lawsuit about twenty years ago. The court ruled that dissemination of baseless future projections with any pretense of truth couched in a lack of specifics was a menace.”

The media had exercised some self-restraint toward mantic arts since then. Actually, it probably started as self-restraint, but it was difficult to call it restraint now. People just stopped seeking it. They stopped trusting things they couldn't explain. That was all.

Moreover, what went on
underground
was totally beyond Shizue's knowledge.

“You're referring to the court case over astrology broadcasts from twenty-two years ago,” Hinako said.

With her cutting in so matter-of-factly, it seemed Hinako was much more familiar with this case than Shizue.

“It's as you state, Ms. Fuwa, that the media had been broadcasting baseless conjecture of the future on a daily basis. If you look at it from today's ethical standards, the media at the time were without consideration or integrity. Those plaintiffs from the lawsuit were people who'd suffered economic and physical consequences of believing in these predictions, and also those who'd exhibited symptoms of neuroses or dependence on it. The defendants claimed it was only for recreational use and whether or not one believed in it should be left up to the viewer, but that was not any kind of excuse. It's irresponsible. If it's information, it's worth believing. It is positively criminal to be proclaiming this information as fact. It all happened before I was born, but I still resent that this happened.”

“Really?” Shizue was more impressed by how she spoke than by what she said and for a moment was unable to respond.

I didn't realize she was so open-minded.

Shizue was a little surprised.

“Eventually the media and the governing department that oversaw the media's actions lost the case and paid an unheard-of settlement. The verdict was appropriate, but it resulted in a major misconstruction.”

“Misconstruction?”

“Yes. Today, people have the mantic arts confused with baseless predictions of the future. Such foolish predictions are simple, but the phrase is in everyone's mouth. Of course those things will be disdained, but as a result, the mantic arts also have been disdained.”

She seemed remorseful.

Shizue got that impression clearly from the way Hinako spoke about it.

She didn't know what could be the basis of that remorse. This itself was a baseless thought.

“The mantic arts are not the same as predicting the future.”

“You're right. Then it's more like a presentiment?”

“That's even worse,” Hinako said. “A presentiment simply means there is a ‘pre'-existing ‘sentiment.' That kind of thoughtless use of words is what damages society.”

That's…

Shizue had only just thought the same exact thing a few days ago. Shizue examined Hinako's face a second time. The view transfixed Shizue's eyes.

“You're the one who taught me how destructive thoughtless speech can be, Ms. Fuwa. I have been deeply affected by that wisdom since I received it three years ago. I believe culture is the same as the human heart.”

“Ahh.” Shizue remembered something about this conversation now.

However…

Shizue was somewhat astonished to hear her opinions coming from other mouths. To be affected by it and realize that no matter how careful she was, she would be a careless adult too.

“I'm sorry.”

She meant it.

“But this is precisely what I wanted to ask you about. I'm not making fun or disdaining it. I really don't know anything. The mantic arts are—”

“The word
uranai
.”

Hinako interrupted Shizue.

“The word is composed of
boku
, divination, and
kuchi
, or speech.”

It was only after Hinako continued to explain the meaning of divination that Shizue realized it was the Chinese character she was referring to.

“
Boku
is like ‘-mancy,' and refers to divination. Are you familiar with osteomancy—the idea that glimpses of the future can appear in the bones of long-dead animals?”

“Well, no.”

“The theory is that one can interpret fortunes in fissures that have formed in a heated tortoise shell or other sort of bone matter. However, we know now that a shell cannot crack solely through exposure to the sun, and so some other physical event must have contributed to the fissure. In any case, the character for
boku
is a shape that appeared on tortoise shells that were used in these divinations. The character for ‘mouth' was added for ideological reasons.”

“Please don't be mad when I say this,” Shizue became stern. “I think I now understand the etymology of the word
uranai
. But you know, isn't it still a form of divination? I'm only saying this because I don't know, but if the symbols of divination are created by heat or wear or whatever other kind of physical effect, can't the results be swayed?”

“I suppose you're right,” Hinako said plainly.

“In which case, they appear to be coincidences, or else they are artificially handled, but either way, it's a mystery.”

“In this situation you can't really claim artificial manipulation. Making something appear to be a coincidence still implies a mystery.”

“What do you mean?”

“A divination implies that god has kept a secret. It implies we do not know why something has become the way it is. But the cause of the symbols of divination in and of themselves are not unknown.”

“Coincidence is divine, in other words.”

“Strictly speaking you can't define a coincidence. Every phenomenon is only ever the result of one exact cause. Like you said, it is possible to fabricate the fissures in a shell, but there are so many processes required. Then by some interwoven process of application and nature, the complex process leads to unique grooves in the shell. There are an infinite set of minute and subtle circumstances that lead to the finished object of divination. To grasp every single one of the circumstances involved in the meta-phenomena that creates the symbols is not humanly possible. If it were we'd just do the math. And if that were the case we would in fact actually be predicting the future. Am I wrong?”

“No, you're not. I guess that would be a calculation of the future.”

“Yet even in this modern age of machines, we still cannot quantify these circumstances.”

“You're right,” Shizue said.

“Even the central mainframe that runs this country can't predict the way a tortoise shell will crack. At best it is an estimation. And likely to be off.”

Even hundreds of years of forecasting the weather hadn't yielded any amount of certitude.

“So people now call the unpredictable mere coincidence. However, it is not amazing that a tortoise shell can be broken with heat and penetration.”

“You're right. It's just physics.”

“Divination can't escape coincidence. It is merely the understanding that coincidence is the will of god. It doesn't affirm that something abnormal will happen, and it's not especially unscientific.”

“It's a question of speech.”

“It's a question of interpretation.”

Shizue thought for a moment.

“This will of god you speak of. What is the god that—”

“Naturally, god's existence was disproven many centuries ago, and what remains of synthesis religions have been disproven as well. There is no god.”

“Then?”

“To presume the existence of a god is itself a contradiction because it assumes the need to have to prove it. In the last century, people were obsessed with pinpointing the way they ought to be thinking and feeling, but that was problematic too. They thought that questioning one's existence was the nature of existence. Obviously, ‘to exist' doesn't exist.”