of glistening white buildings, two had been destroyed and the others were fully engulfed. To Itoro's surprise a fire brigade was busy fighting the fire, carrying buckets of water ran from the Miyiku River to hurl onto the raging barracks.
Power lines along the river had burned so that only six feet of their once forty-foot lengths stood blackened and charred out of the scorched earth, looking like matchsticks sunk into the soil by a giant hand. The stones of Hiroshima castle on the other side of the river were blackened like charcoal. The tiered roofs had been swept away, five hundred years of architectural mastery reduced to a smoldering fire pit. Everything was so tragic. This was not how he remembered it. Itoro's memories were clear. He'd passed this point a thousand times and knew the area near the river to be one of the most beautiful sights. Old women who'd once worked in the castle tended flowers and trees to make a ring of beauty around the harsh stones of Hiroshima Castle. After more than four hundred years of gardening, the result was spectacular, the beauty of some of the gardens bringing tears of joy and wonder to first-time visitors.
But no more.
Whatever foul thing had come to Hiroshima had not spared the gardens. Itoro didn't know what saddened him the most, the loss of life, or the loss of the cultivated beauty. It shamed him to compare the two, because part of being human meant that he valued humanity more than anything else.
A shout drew his attention. One of the firemen had paused in his running, only to remove his mask and, with an expression of supreme horror, point back down the street the way Itoro had come.
A throng of two hundred marched up the street, the sound of their shuffling feet like angry whispers in a cave. They held their hands and arms out and above them, their burns too painful to touch, clearly unwilling to allow their arms to come into contact with anything. Like Armageddon zombies, they lurched along, vocal chords sizzled by the blast, unable to make any other sound except moans of pain. Where they went, a trail of skin and blood traveled behind. From pieces no larger than a hand to swathes of several feet, the skin crawled along the ground following the throng.
As Itoro watched, a piece of skin fell away from an elderly woman's arm. The people behind her trampled it, but once it cleared the traffic, the skin lurched forward as if tugged by an invisible string. Unwilling to be left behind, it followed, as if given the chance it would reattach itself and become whole once more.
A memory surfaced. April on the shoulders of Mount Fuji when he and Myomi spent the whole hanami in silence. They didn't need to speak to each other. They felt a kinship through their touching fingers as they witnessed the snow falling along the cherry tree boughs, catching like blossoms and twinkling in cold air. God how he'd loved her then.
Itoro spun and found a yard-long length of skin wrapped around his left leg. He clawed at it, and with the help of his right foot, was able to pry it away. He kicked it and stepped back. When the skin hit the ground, it stilled for a moment, then came for him again.
Backpedaling, true fear spiked through him. Fear of living, fear of pain, fear of fire, every fear paled in comparison to the fear of losing self. He'd never thought he'd need to worry about it, but the unbidden memories terrified him. Where was the dividing line between self and others? In the train station it was that melted connection that separated everyone. But what about memories? How many of someone else's memories could a person have before they were no longer themselves and became that other person? Was it the way a person looked that defined them, or who they were inside?
He'd never been to Mount Fuji. He didn't know a woman named Myomi. Whoever's memory that had been, Itoro had felt the bottomless chasm of love the man had possessed for the woman, and in feeling it, realized that the owner of the memory was dead and would most certainly never feel that way again...unless Itoro allowed the skin to become a part of him.
Once again he ran.
Past the fire brigade.
Past the ruined gardens.
Past the market where he'd bought flowers for Katsumi last week to commemorate their anniversary.