The Yomigaeri Tunnel

Chapter One
Most Likely to Have a Mental Breakdown in the Bathroom

You know how they say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? Well, when I was little, I always thought it was life. There’s a life at the end of the tunnel. In my childish mind, where stuffed animals could talk and unicorns were real and rainbows were more than mere tricks of the light, that was what we were being promised. We had to keep going, no matter how bad life seemed, because someday, we would reach the end of our darkness and be given a whole new life.

I believed a lot of dumb things when I was little, including the idea that swallowing a watermelon seed meant you were going to grow an entire fruit in your stomach, but I don’t think hoping for life at the end of a tunnel is stupid. If you’re sick of being the person you are, if you hate the people you’re supposed to love and love the people you’re supposed to hate, if you look in the mirror every morning and struggle to recognize the ghost reflected back at you, it feels like the only answer is to start a new life. How is some light supposed to help you? Wouldn’t it be better if there could be life at the end of a tunnel?

Well, I’m older now. Too old to believe in all those childish fantasies. And I’ve decided I don’t need the life to be literal. Just becoming someone else would be enough.

“Monika.”

I raise my head. Natsuki, the former president of the Japanese Club, watches me through his thick-rimmed glasses, a cup of tea in his hands. We may have graduated together yesterday, but he already seems years ahead of me. Stanford-bound, just as he’s been dreaming since he learned the difference between college and collage, he was always going to either wind up on some 30 Under 30 list or have a nervous breakdown. Par for the course for kids of our generation, really. I’m just glad he’s willing to keep himself chained to our high school’s Japanese Club long enough to organize and host this celebratory going-away brunch rather than leaving it to some of our classmates who—and I’m just being honest here—probably still don’t know the difference between college and collage.

“Sorry,” I say. “Did you need something?”

“No, nothing.” Natsuki gives me a tight smile over the lip of his cup. “I just wanted to check up on you. You seem to be deep in thought.”

I return his tense smile. “I’m just musing quietly.”

It was impossible to think at that brunch table. Not just because some of the others were trying to see which of them could chug their miso soup the fastest, though that was an absolutely horrifying, mind-numbing, I-can’t-believe-they-gave-you-a-diploma experience, but because everyone seemed so alive. And I just couldn’t handle that.

So I excused myself for a moment, not that anyone had been paying me any attention, and sat on one of the lonely chairs by the glass-door exit. Cue quiet musing.

“Ah. Understandable.” Natsuki glances over at the tables, takes a long sip of tea, then looks back at me. “I should check in with the Cultural Center’s head of operations.”

Probably a good idea. Natsuki may be just about the most well-mannered, levelheaded person I’ve ever met, but as the final act of his presidency, he invited the Japanese Clubs from some of the nearby schools too, and those kids can get rowdy, to say the least. Earlier today, two fellow grads were chastised for trying to steal the Noh masks from the Japanese Cultural Center’s main display.

We were going to give them back, one said. We just wanted to try them on.

Uh-huh, Natsuki said. Did you just graduate from high school? Or preschool?

“Please tell her we’re sorry,” I say.

He grimaces. “Will do.” After taking a peek at his phone, he glances at me, his expression cool. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

I try not to read too much into it. He’s only saying that because he has to, the type to seek people out on social media and follow them even if they never follow him back, wish them a happy birthday even if they never respond, and message them whenever he hears they’ve won an award or gotten an internship even if they leave him on read.

Before, our interactions were limited to the brief, obligatory exchange of tight-lipped smiles at club meetings.

Then Shun died, and everything changed. Everyone changed. Our class both grew together and fell apart, and now, everyone’s leaving again. Without him.

I’m convinced no one just dies. Even if they’re alone when it happens, even if no one has spoken to them in years, even if they think no one cares, one person’s death affects so many.

I watch, silent, as Natsuki makes a beeline for the head of operations. She stands in the little cubicle off to the side, the giant glass window giving her a perfect view of the chaos she’s unleashed upon her beloved Cultural Center.

I reluctantly edge my way over to where the others are gathered. Avoiding the gazes of my classmates, I survey the students from the other schools’ Japanese Clubs, my eyes snagging on the guy wearing a bright yellow shirt with a bunny-ear-toting anime girl, then the girl standing off to the side, her delicate fingers picking at the skin on her lips.

“If you try to ask for another color,” Anime Shirt says, his eyes wide, “he grabs you by the collar and drags you into the underworld.”

One girl tilts her head. “Then how are you supposed to escape him?”

“You have to either ignore him or say you don’t want any kind of paper, then leave before he gets angry.”

“He’s a vengeful spirit. I’m pretty sure he’d be angry already.”

Another girl narrows her eyes. “How are you supposed to ignore a spirit in the bathroom? There’s no way I’m doing my business when there’s a guy floating above me.”

The first girl frowns. “I thought the spirit that haunted the bathroom was a girl.”

Anime Shirt shakes his head. “That’s a different story. Hanako-san.”

I try not to roll my eyes. I used to be morbidly fascinated with Japanese folktales when I was little, but I’ve grown out of ghost stories. The scariest monsters are never actually fantastical beasts with shadowy faces and long claws; they’re the very real truths lying beneath the surface.

“Fine,” Anime Shirt says. “Someone else can tell a spooky story.”

“Please,” one girl says. “No more bathroom-related ones. I’ve had to pee for the past half hour, but now I’m too afraid to go.”

Her friend laughs and takes her by the arm. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

As they head for the bathroom, hands clasped, I find myself thinking of Thea. My best friend is always willing to go on an adventure, even if our destination is just the bathroom or a teacher’s cramped little cubicle. She offered to come here with me today, despite having not a single drop of Asian blood in her veins and no real interest in Japanese culture, but I let her off the hook.

At least one of us should enjoy the first official day of the rest of our lives, I said.

The rest of our lives, huh? She let out a monosyllabic laugh. Well, that’s depressing.

“Enough with the ghost stories already,” one of the remaining girls says, her hands raised like she’s about to lay down the law. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

“Like what?” Anime Shirt asks. “The fact that we’re about to start college in a few months?”

“God, no. That’s a million times scarier than the ghosts.”

One of the guys raises a hand like he thinks we’re still in class. “We’re in the Japanese Cultural Center. Why not talk about cultural landmarks?”

The girl raises her brows, inadvertently matching the expression of the Hyottoko mask hanging on the wall behind her. “Uh, maybe because we don’t have any?”

“Yeah, we do.” Anime Shirt snaps his fingers and squints at the white-tiled floor like he’s trying to make out the tiny letters on a microscopic cheat sheet. “What about that thing? The tunnel that’s supposed to be around here? The—what was it called?”

“Yomigaeri Tunnel,” his friend says.

A chill runs up my spine at the word yomigaeri. I’m far from a Japanese language expert, but even I know yomigaeri is related to resurrection.

Anime Shirt snaps his fingers one last time, the sound echoing in the cavernous main room of the Cultural Center. “That’s it. The Yomigaeri Tunnel. Anyone heard of it?”

“I thought we were done with the ghost stories,” one girl whines.

“We are. A tunnel isn’t a ghost. It’s a tunnel.”

“A spoooooky tunnel,” another guy says with a wiggle of his fingers.

“A fake tunnel,” one of the girls says. “I mean, that story doesn’t even make sense.”

“Oh, and the story of Hanako-san the bathroom ghost does?”

The girl shrugs. “Touché.”

“Okay, so listen: There’s supposed to be this underground passageway somewhere in this town. If you go into it, it makes you go, like, batsh—” Anime Shirt stops and glances at Natsuki, now in the middle of a forty-five-degree bow to the head of operations. “Crazy. It makes you go crazy.”

“Dude,” one guy says. “We just got out of high school. We’re already crazy.”

“No, seriously. It’s supposed to show you all your worst fears. People have full-on hallucinated down there, like they’re on acid or something.”

“Maybe they were on acid,” one girl says helpfully.

He shoots her a look. “No. They weren’t.”

“Why would you even go there?” one girl asks.

“It sounds awesome,” one guy says. “Imagine getting high without having to pay for it.”

“My brother ate some mushrooms from our yard once, and we didn’t have to pay for those,” another guy says. “We did have to pay for the hospital bills, though.”

I have to suppress a smile. I’m going to miss this. Drop a bunch of high schoolers into one room and encourage them to talk about food, anime, and the creepiest ghost stories known to man, and there will never be a dull moment. Shun wasn’t in the club, too much of a self-described loner to hang out with a bunch of kids Naruto-running from class to class, but I’ve always felt like he would have liked it here.

No, that’s not true. I never even thought about him joining the club until it was too late. Until he had joined a club with a cost much higher than the fifteen dollars Natsuki had to squeeze out of us to cover all the Japan-exclusive Kit Kats and Hi-Chews the others had insisted he buy.

For the culture, they kept saying, as if all of Japan could possibly be contained in a shiny plastic wrapper.

“Why is it called the Yomigaeri Tunnel?” one girl asks.

When I turn to her, I recognize her as the one who kept picking her lip. She’s rife with tension, her arms pulled close to her sides like she’s trying to fit into a narrow vase. Her hair has been dyed a pale lavender, giving her the appearance of a withering flower.

I can’t imagine how much bleach she had to use to get the color to stay. Thea tried to dye her hair once, but even after soaking the ends of the strands for hours, the change in color was almost too subtle to notice. She called it one of the greatest disappointments of her life.

It makes me want to DYE, she joked.

I laughed then. But it doesn’t seem all that funny anymore.

“That’s the cool thing,” Anime Shirt says. “You aren’t supposed to go to the tunnel just because you want the LSD experience without the LSD.”

In the corner of my vision, I spot Natsuki side-eyeing us. He keeps his focus on the head of operations, but he can obviously hear us through the open cubicle door—which means the head of operations probably can too.

It’s a good thing we’ve graduated. We’re never getting invited back here.

“Supposedly, if you make it through to the other end, you get—”

“High,” someone jokes.

I stare at the ground as another round of giggles bounces around the Cultural Center. I can’t bring myself to laugh anymore.

Neither can the girl who asked about the tunnel’s name. She may have seemed bored out of her mind earlier, but she’s laser-focused on Anime Shirt now, her gaze so intense, I feel like she’s staring at me too.

Maybe that—that look, as if she’s seen straight into my soul—is what makes me do it. What makes me clear my throat, my eyes roaming along the walls, each one painted a deep scarlet, like an old wound, and say, “Doesn’t ‘yomigaeri’ mean ‘resurrection’? Does the tunnel have something to do with that?”

The others look over at me, their brows furrowed, as if they had forgotten I was even there. I suppose I’m the ghost in the room now.

“Yeah,” Anime Shirt says after a moment. “They say—and this is just a rumor—the tunnel will let you resurrect someone.”

We all fall silent again. I can feel people’s gazes sliding around the room.

I wonder how much the students at the other schools know about Shun. He wasn’t in the club, despite being part Japanese, but he was popular, at least at our school. They have to have heard something. Or maybe I just hope they have. I hope they know. I hope they care.

“But it’s just a rumor. Plus, no one’s ever gotten to the other side.”

“How long is that tunnel?” someone mutters.

“It’s not about how long it is.”

“That’s what she said,” one guy pipes up, eliciting another wave of snickers.

The girl with the pale hair rolls her eyes and resumes picking her lip.

Ignoring the others, Anime Shirt says, “It’s about what happens in there.”

“That’s what she said too,” a girl says, earning her a high five from the other guy.

Pale Hair peels her lip, then brings the back of her hand to her mouth to stanch the flow of blood.

I look away.

“How would that even work?” another girl asks. “I mean, like, you get to the end of the tunnel, and God Himself is standing there? What if you go in from the other side?” She glares at the others. “Do not say, ‘That’s what she said.’”

“I don’t know,” Anime Shirt says. “It’s just a story, and, like I said, no one has ever actually gotten through it.”

“Where is it?” the girl with the bleeding lip asks. “The tunnel.”

Anime Shirt exchanges a look with some of the others in the group. Scuffing his sneaker along the polished floor, he says, “I don’t know. Again, it’s just some scary story I heard from my cousin. It’s not like it’s real.”

“It could be,” someone says.