Mei's Story

Mei’s story is a peculiar one and was the first of the many stories that began flooding into my office. She came to me after a particularly harrowing experience and after hearing what happened, I began to see things in the prefecture differently. As a transplant, a child whose family traces back to one of the original twenty but I was born and raised on the east coast of the United States, I was not aware of the secrets hidden in the prefecture. Mei showed me what I hadn’t noticed before and since her story, I have not been able to avoid the symbols I now see everywhere.

—

Mei had just finished one of her first training days as an apprentice florists, the job she took right after graduating from high school, and was taking her time to leisurely walk to the Midoriyama train station. She wasn’t going anywhere, but was instead planning on meeting up with her boyfriend, Kentaro, who had begun his tenure at East University in a neighboring prefecture. He was often gone for two or three days in a row, but would come home so that he could spend time with Mei, especially on the weekends.

On the way to the train station, she noticed a man standing in an alleyway staring at a symbol on the wall. At first she thought he was crazy or lost, but when she looked at him, she discovered that it was Kentaro’s father, Junichi.

“Junichi San?” she called from the end of the alleyway.

Junichi didn’t respond, he kept staring at the wall. At first she thought maybe she was mistaken, that the man could not have been Kentaro’s father, and that was why he didn’t respond. But while she kept looking, she became more convinced that it was, in fact, Junichi.

She stepping into the alley, getting close to the man, and called out his name again. Again, he didn’t respond. This wasn’t like him. He was usually a fairly organized and clear-headed person. Not knowing what to do, she decided to try a different tactic.