Ao О̄mae, "Shark Friends"

     There was a boy who wanted to die being eaten by sharks, and he wrote that as his Tanabata wish. “Why?” I asked. At the time, I was in my second year of junior high, and he was a fourth-grader in elementary school. Our Tanabata wishes were on display at the community center, and the local festival had ended, so we were there cleaning up. It was around nine at night, so there weren’t many kids left. I spoke to him a bit like an older sister might, and he snapped back at me.
    “If I die getting eaten by a shark, someone might laugh at my funeral.”
    The community center was used for wakes and funerals too. I imagined my funeral happening before my eyes. I was in a casket, and the left side of my face from my temple to between my eyebrows was missing. So the lid was kept shut the whole time, and when the mourners looked through the little glass window to see my face, my wound was cleverly hidden with flowers. Only my family knew the details of my injuries. But the mourners knew I had died being eaten by a shark. Most of them were sad, and some were angry at me about the way I went. But among them, there were people who, their faces twitching as if they were about to smile on their own, imagined me getting eaten by a shark.  I was dead, but I would have been happy if they had laughed.
    “That’s a wonderful thought,” I said.
    When the boy, Mahoto, entered middle school, we started to hang out. It seemed more convenient to be together. Before that, he and I would go to the beach separately and cut the tips of our fingers with a knife, or bite them with our canines, and drip blood into the water to attract sharks. We both tended to get depressed and felt that we could die anytime as long as things weren’t too bad; we both liked sharks and monsters, and we thought dripping blood into the ocean was cool. Once we started hanging out, we found ourselves at the beach more often. In the summer, in the shade of some rocks, in a spot like a cave somewhat removed from the area crowded with swimmers, two young people dropped blood into the waves. This would make a great picture, I thought. Once we were adults, we were able to do it by moonlight.
    Until I was about 21, I thought we might date. But I bet we won’t. Not now or in the future. Our relationship was that of wanting to die being eaten by sharks.
    We had our own lovers, and I got married at age 36. I told my husband about the boy, my shark friend, and at first, he would see me off with a smile, but as our trips to the beach continued, he abruptly announced that he wanted to come along. I couldn’t have that. My husband just wanted to be with me; he didn’t have any interest in dying being eaten by sharks. We argued. Gradually he grew distrustful. We divorced, and when I remarried eight years later, I didn’t tell my partner about my shark friend—because my shark friend was in the hospital. He had a disease that gradually weakened his immune system, so he couldn’t go to the beach anymore.
    The first time I went to visit him, I put my hands together on my head to make a fin and walked in bent over, swerving back and forth. I opened my mouth wide and pretended to swallow him up. He got annoyed.
    “Cut it out.”
    “Sorry.”
    “No, I’m sorry. You just looked so much like a shark, I...”
    We haven’t talked about sharks since that day. We aren’t shark friends anymore. Now we’re just best friends.
    Some days I tell my husband I’m going to visit my best friend, and then I don’t go to the hospital. I go to the beach and bleed into the water, wading farther and farther out. I keep hoping a shark will come and take me away, but the waves wash me and my blood right back up.