The fruit from Ryuu-chan

I’m one of those so-called ‘people who can see ghosts.’ But having said that, I can only see and converse with them, I can’t do anything else special. Like, to explain it in easy-to-understand terms, if I go to the scene of an accident, I might see a pale looking young boy there. Our eyes meet, and he shyly looks away. That’s it.

It’s been like this for 20 or so years now. I see these ‘things’ just like regular human beings, only paler, but for the most part they’ve never tried to bring me any harm. Some of them are just standing there, like they’re thinking. Others are looking around at nothing in particular. Those that can freely move about of their own free will are quite rare.

To be honest, I like the occult and I’m extremely thankful to be like this. You may say I even feel lucky. Thanks to my love of the occult and my ability to see ghosts I’ve had many different experiences, but I don’t know if I’m this way naturally. I’d like to tell you about my earliest memory.

My family home is a shrine in Omi. You could say it’s also like a shop, but for 300 years my father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on have worked at the shrine. It was around the time I was about to start going to kindergarten. Every day I ran around the shrine grounds until one day I found a small pond by the hill near the shrine office. The water was clear and it couldn’t have been more than one metre deep, so I could see the bottom very well. To the side was a rock that was easily bigger than I was at the time.

I climbed the rock and jumped down, then climbed the rock and jumped down again. I don’t know what was so fun about it, but I was engrossed in it. After one of my many landings later, I suddenly noticed something. I was looking down at the ground and I could see these small feet wearing zori (Japanese sandals). I looked up and saw a boy, just slightly taller than me, wearing a strange, light blue kimono (kind of like a jinbei). “What are you doing?” He looked at me, his expression full of interest. It was a beautiful, androgynous face. I didn’t think much more of him than some kid coming to visit the shrine and started my ritual of climbing the rock again. Without saying a word, he began to imitate me; climbing the rock and jumping down, climbing the rock and jumping down. This amazing game was my idea, so of course I was annoyed, but being a child we soon made friends. He said his name was Ryuuji. I called him Ryuu-chan, and we played together at the hill every day after that.

Ryuu-chan was a master bug catcher and had expert knowledge about them as well. The first and only time I ever saw a stick insect was when we were playing together. It was around this time that my father told me not to go near the pond by the hill. Of course; it was dangerous for a small child to play in such a place.

One day, when I was playing with Ryuu-chan by the hill, I found a beautiful rock lying at the bottom of the pond. I stuck my arm into the water to try to grab it. Just a little further. It was that thought that made me careless. My centre of gravity shifted forward, and I fell into the abyss of the pond. I panicked. The oxygen was stolen from my lungs and I couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. Which way was up? I wanted to breathe. Suddenly someone gripped my arm with incredible strength and pulled me out.

It was Ryuu-chan. Thinking about it now, there was no way a boy of my age would have been strong enough to pull me out of the water alone. Of course, at the time it didn’t even cross my mind. I just sobbed at the fear I felt of drowning and cried all the way home.

When my mother saw me dripping wet and crying, she was shocked. I told her I fell into the pond and a local boy helped me out. She blew her top. She grabbed my arm and dragged me to the shed outside. I hated the gloominess of the place and in general never went near it, so the fear I felt at being locked in there alone, well, even now I have sympathy for my younger self.

I sat alone in the dark shed and cried, but then I felt someone else come inside. My face stiffened, terrified it was a monster or something, but then I relaxed. It was Ryuu-chan. He sat down next to me and until my mother came to call me, I fell asleep. Seeing me like that, my mother later said, she realised that I was not the type of kid that a typical scolding would work on. It was from that point that my parents were aware of Ryuu-chan’s existence. He was one of my friends in the neighbourhood. That’s all they knew about him.

Even after I started going to kindergarten and then elementary school, I played with Ryuu-chan almost every single day. I didn’t know if he was at the same school as me, but I didn’t let the thought bother me very much. When I turned eight, Ryuu-chan gave me a yellow piece of fruit. We washed it in the pond and ate it together. I remember it being kind of sour, and not very nice. When I returned home, I proudly told my parents about it during dinner. I was scared of what they’d do if they knew I was near the pond, so of course I left that part out. They listened to my story and then I put the remains of the fruit on the table. Their faces, especially my father’s, instantly turned blue.

First, the fruit was completely rotten. It was so juicy during lunchtime, but now it had turned into a jelly-like state. Glaring at the fruit, my father started questioning me in a harsh tone. I blurted out that I washed it in the pond and my father grabbed me, then he ran to my grandfather’s room so fast his legs could barely keep up.

“He’s been possessed by ~~! He’s eaten the kinu(?)” (I didn’t know what he was saying). My grandfather woke up at his yelling and looked at me absentmindedly.

The old guy from the farm near our shrine came running over and there was a big fuss in the entranceway. He was in a panic over something. My mother went to deal with him, and then my father and grandfather soon followed.

I had no idea what all the noise was about, but when I looked outside I saw Ryuu-chan standing on the veranda. He was as beautiful as always. Just one thing was different; he had white hair, which was as long as he was tall.

“I’ll come to pick you up soon, so wait for me,” he said. I nodded my head in return. “When will that be?” Before I had the chance to put it into words, my vision was stolen from me. My grandfather covered me in a linen bag and carried me somewhere (probably the main shrine). The bag was covered in warm sake before I was put in the car and taken to the city.

The car rattled for a while and then finally went quiet. The bag was removed and my mother and father’s worried faces were looking at me. My mother explained to me that I could never go back to the house. My father and grandfather would return, but from now on I was to live with my mother at her parents’ house. I innocently said ‘okay’ and my parents looked at me with tired faces, but I wasn’t especially concerned. I was sad to be parted from my father and grandfather, but I figured that if I ever wanted to see them, they would come to see me.

But above all, Ryuu-chan said he would come for me, so it would be for the best if I waited. And just like that, I became a citizen of the old capital (Kyoto). It was around this time that I started to see things. Or maybe it would be better to say that until that point I had been living with a limited field of vision, and only occasionally encountered things. But this, I think this is all because of that fruit Ryuu-chan gave me.

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