Part of observing humans in their natural habitat, Aya decided, would have to include going to where large groups of them could be found. To this end, she decided she was going to spend Sunday afternoon at the mall.
The tengu did not anticipate doing any shopping herself, but she decided to bring money with her anyway, just in case. Dressed in a blue T-shirt, canvas shorts and sandals, Aya took up her camera and headed out the door.
The mall was only a few blocks away. From the outside, it looked like any of the other anonymous office buildings downtown. Once she stepped inside, though, she was immediately assailed with a whole other sensory experience.
The air was significantly colder in the mall than it was outside, and seemed to be stripped of any scent that could even remotely resemble air, replaced instead with perfumes and odors that blurred and overlapped, many of them unknown to Aya. A static din filled the spacious lobby – the hum of the escalators, the conversations of others, barely discernible music from somewhere, the splashing of the fountain in the lobby's center, and numerous other anonymous noises and tones of unknown origin crowded the air.
But what really struck Aya was the visual contrast: dozens of shops were available, and yet the people strolling by gave none of them so much as a glance. They milled about as if walking around inside the building was the point of going to the mall, and buying something was an afterthought. She'd apparently been mistaken to think of a mall as just a larger, indoor version of a market. Nodding, she took photos of the escalators, the crowds, the almost empty shops.
Aya decided some exploring was in order, so she took an escalator to the second level. Walking past the different shops was a bit overwhelming – the sheer level of variety made it difficult to decide which shop to enter, especially if you'd arrived without a clear idea of what you wanted, like she had. Aya began to understand why most people were walking past the shops, but entering none.
Before long she saw the food court. The tengu wasn't particularly hungry, but she felt this may be a good opportunity to at least taste something modern humans in the outside world drink or eat; something wholly modern. She approached the food stall closest to her. A teenaged boy in a yellow shirt and matching hat smiled, welcoming her. Aya smiled back, then looked at the menu. She found it confusing to work out just what the items on the menu were. They had names like “The Salaryman's Special” and “Mom On the Go”. She knew quite well what the listed ingredients under these titles were, but nothing struck her as all that interesting.
“I guess I'll just have something to drink,” she shrugged as she approached the counter. “What do you recommend?”
The boy was apparently unaccustomed to being asked for his opinion of the stall's drinks. He hesitated a moment. “Coke?” he offered.
“Sure. I'll try that.”
Aya took her small Coke to a nearby table and sat down. She sniffed discreetly at the straw. It smelled sweet. Then she took a sip.
The tengu recoiled in disgust. What horrible creation was this? It was sweet, but it burned; it was cold, but it was boiling. Who would make something so awful, and why would anyone drink this? Aya stood, tossed the drink into a nearby trashcan, and left the food court.
Aya found the mall to be a bit boring. Even buying herself a red cashmere scarf didn't perk up her mood all that much. It was as she walked along the lower level again, wondering if she should look around some more or go home, that the headache came back in a sudden, rushing wave – her vision blurred, her ears rang, and nausea began to build. Remembering what happened last time she started feeling this way, she knew she had to get out of sight before she became ill. Looking around, she saw an exit sign above a pair of doors. She pushed through them, hurrying down the corridor beyond them, breaking into a run. At the end, another door, which she burst through, her heart pounding, the pain in her head coming in ever-stronger waves.
Aya stood on a landing overlooking a narrow alleyway. Without a moment's hesitation, she unfurled her wings and shot straight up, into the sky. She didn't care at this point if anyone saw her, nor could she think about where she would land. The only thing on her mind was the automatic compulsion to get away, as fast as possible.
Within seconds, the tengu was up over the clouds. She hovered there for a bit, trying to collect her thoughts. Her nausea was gone, and her vision and hearing were almost entirely back to normal. Even her headache was already reduced to a faint throb behind her ears. Maybe flying cured her sickness, she considered, but this still didn't explain what got her ill in the first place. Aya looked down. In her haste to get away, her sandals had come off during her ascent.
“Well this is perfect,” she sighed. She really liked those sandals.
A couple weeks later, Aya was walking to work, thinking about her time in the outside world so far. She'd been sick twice more since her trip to the mall – once, while at the library, she felt it coming on, and immediately went home, collapsing onto her futon for the rest of the day; and another time while riding the train. Fortunately, she'd been able to get off at the next stop and clear her head at a nearby park before it got too bad. She was learning how to deal with the attacks. That they were becoming more frequent still bothered her.
She thought about what she'd learned so far. She knew that modern humans could be not just detached but willfully ignorant of their surroundings – incurious, self-centered, and uninterested in seeing anything they didn't expect or even want to see. On the other hand, there were people like Koji, Hitomi, and the rest of the band. Koji specifically said that he had rejected the rules of society. But “society” wasn't a set of rules dictated by one person, or a council; society was everyone, and its rules arose from collective behavior. In other words, if these warm, friendly, sincere people were society's rejects, what did that say about society?
At the same time, it wasn't as if the modern humans who did buy into society's rules were entirely bad people. Hideaki had always been kind to her, and even Ryu wasn't a completely cold authoritarian. These people she worked with, though, were still quite different from people like Koji and Hitomi. They were, despite their good natures, bound to a system that they chose to take part of, and that seemed to her to be very difficult to live without.
Aya pushed open the office doors and said her hellos as she walked to her desk. She sat down and turned on her computer, as she had many times before. That was another thing – life in the modern outside world was grindingly, weepingly dull. She supposed it was something you learned to get used to, especially if the alternative was to live in an abandoned warehouse.
Yet even knowing all this, she still felt as though she hadn't touched the surface of modern humanity. There just wasn't enough material yet for a real article. Well, unless it was a review of the Heavenly Dogs, or a public health warning about Coke.
“Syameimaru!” Ryu called from his desk. “Line two! And would you join the rest of us in the twenty-first century and buy a mobile already?”
Aya quickly took up the receiver, and smiled when she saw Hideaki giving her a joking scowl.
“Aya Syameimaru,” she answered.
“Hey, it's Koji.”
“Oh.” Aya lowered her voice. “How are you?”
“I have a surprise for you,” he said. “Meet me at the front gates of the zoo, at midnight, tonight. Got it?”
The zoo? “Yes, but-”
“Good. See you then.” The line went dead.
Aya looked at the phone for a moment, incredulous, and then hung up. Strange, but intriguing. She liked his playful nature. But right now, there was work to do. Aya clicked open the police blotter.
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