Short Story: Jukai
This was years ago, when I was just a young man. I was travelling, wandering really, with no set destination, taking any road that led further from home. I found myself in Japan, in a hostel with Mount Fuji as backdrop. But I was too scared to climb the mountain or even attempt to, she looking like a harsh mistress and me no climber, so I grabbed the tattered guidebook handed me along with my room keys and saw a big deal was made out of Aokigahara, called Jukai by the locals, a forest whose biggest claim-to-fame is it’s one of the world’s most popular suicide spots.
I took a coach which went nearby to Jukai and headed in with the feeling that it was certainly possible I would kill myself in the coming hours. It was a mild day, sunny but cold, and the trees were starting to molt, it then being around the beginning of winter, but there was enough greenery that everything, ironically, looked stuffed with life. Tweets and chirps sang choruses from all directions, colliding off one another.
I walked for maybe 40 minutes until I was fairly deep into the forest. It had been around 20 minutes since I’d last seen anyone, which settled me to thinking I was adequately alone. I had brought no rope so undid my belt, black and leather, a gift from my cousin (I think) and jumped up to the first branch of a nearby tree and tied the belt round it. Sat there I took a moment - possibly the first moment of this type I’d had in months - to reflect on where I was and what I was doing. It was unnerving, the touch of the leather, knowing this thing which had no will of its own had the power to kill me. It felt similar to how I imagine it’d feel if a total stranger pressed a gun to my head. It was the same thing really: I was just as unsure if I was about to die or not. There’s no need to go into the whole thought process I worked through while I was sat there, only what I did next is relevant: I tied the belt round my neck and jumped, intending to die.
My vision spun and my brain spazzed so for a few seconds I didn’t know what happened, then clarity returned and I realised the belt had snapped, leaving, as I’d see later, a bloody red line across my neck. I felt high for a few seconds after, likely from the short time I’d inhaled no oxygen followed by the gasping inhalations I was doing now. My heart was on the fritz for a good time after. I pulled the belt down and carried it in one hand as I walked in a random direction. I took it as a sign that I wasn’t going to die that day. Not in the sense of ‘a sign from god’ or any such shit but just as a sign I’d decided myself: the belt had snapped, there was no need to attempt again today.
I kept walking, hoping to come out of the forest roughly where I’d come in (the other side, where Fuji stood, having no road and no coaches back) and after a while I came to be walking towards someone. They began as a blurry outline in my vision. Neither of us changed our paths, and soon I realised it was a woman, Japanese, about the same age as I was at the time. As we got within shouting distance I saw she was carrying a rope, styled into a noose, and that she looked all bloody, had blood all over her clothes, maybe having thrown up blood going by the patterns on her shirt. We both stopped at a distance of a few yards and ogled one another. It dawned on me, and likely her, that we were both in a similar situation, and were likely both experiencing the same mixture of despair and elation. I imagined, although I can never know, that she too was walking in a direction she had no definite claim to.
I don’t remember which one of us initiated things, or if it happened through a flash of telekinesis - possibly a product of the heightened consciousness granted briefly by a close scrape with death - but we moved fast to one another and started kissing and before long my hands were down her pants fingering her cunt and she had my trousers off and was sucking me off, loud slurping noises coming from me going in and out of her. Then I got her up against a tree and started to fuck her, pushing deep inside, until she was groaning aloud and I was wailing and yelling, although god knows if she spoke a word of English. She lifted my hands round to squeeze her ass while I thumped her into the tree hard enough to hurt her a little, and after a while I finished inside her.
After, we sat on the grass and looked at each other with lazy eyes. I thought about things I could say but realised whatever I could say would likely only spoil it, and she must have realised the same. We sat there for ten, fifteen minutes, until the cold returned to us and we put our clothes back on and went back to walking our opposing directions. That kept me going for the next week or so, which was long enough for me to find myself somewhere far away.
I took a coach which went nearby to Jukai and headed in with the feeling that it was certainly possible I would kill myself in the coming hours. It was a mild day, sunny but cold, and the trees were starting to molt, it then being around the beginning of winter, but there was enough greenery that everything, ironically, looked stuffed with life. Tweets and chirps sang choruses from all directions, colliding off one another.
I walked for maybe 40 minutes until I was fairly deep into the forest. It had been around 20 minutes since I’d last seen anyone, which settled me to thinking I was adequately alone. I had brought no rope so undid my belt, black and leather, a gift from my cousin (I think) and jumped up to the first branch of a nearby tree and tied the belt round it. Sat there I took a moment - possibly the first moment of this type I’d had in months - to reflect on where I was and what I was doing. It was unnerving, the touch of the leather, knowing this thing which had no will of its own had the power to kill me. It felt similar to how I imagine it’d feel if a total stranger pressed a gun to my head. It was the same thing really: I was just as unsure if I was about to die or not. There’s no need to go into the whole thought process I worked through while I was sat there, only what I did next is relevant: I tied the belt round my neck and jumped, intending to die.
My vision spun and my brain spazzed so for a few seconds I didn’t know what happened, then clarity returned and I realised the belt had snapped, leaving, as I’d see later, a bloody red line across my neck. I felt high for a few seconds after, likely from the short time I’d inhaled no oxygen followed by the gasping inhalations I was doing now. My heart was on the fritz for a good time after. I pulled the belt down and carried it in one hand as I walked in a random direction. I took it as a sign that I wasn’t going to die that day. Not in the sense of ‘a sign from god’ or any such shit but just as a sign I’d decided myself: the belt had snapped, there was no need to attempt again today.
I kept walking, hoping to come out of the forest roughly where I’d come in (the other side, where Fuji stood, having no road and no coaches back) and after a while I came to be walking towards someone. They began as a blurry outline in my vision. Neither of us changed our paths, and soon I realised it was a woman, Japanese, about the same age as I was at the time. As we got within shouting distance I saw she was carrying a rope, styled into a noose, and that she looked all bloody, had blood all over her clothes, maybe having thrown up blood going by the patterns on her shirt. We both stopped at a distance of a few yards and ogled one another. It dawned on me, and likely her, that we were both in a similar situation, and were likely both experiencing the same mixture of despair and elation. I imagined, although I can never know, that she too was walking in a direction she had no definite claim to.
I don’t remember which one of us initiated things, or if it happened through a flash of telekinesis - possibly a product of the heightened consciousness granted briefly by a close scrape with death - but we moved fast to one another and started kissing and before long my hands were down her pants fingering her cunt and she had my trousers off and was sucking me off, loud slurping noises coming from me going in and out of her. Then I got her up against a tree and started to fuck her, pushing deep inside, until she was groaning aloud and I was wailing and yelling, although god knows if she spoke a word of English. She lifted my hands round to squeeze her ass while I thumped her into the tree hard enough to hurt her a little, and after a while I finished inside her.
After, we sat on the grass and looked at each other with lazy eyes. I thought about things I could say but realised whatever I could say would likely only spoil it, and she must have realised the same. We sat there for ten, fifteen minutes, until the cold returned to us and we put our clothes back on and went back to walking our opposing directions. That kept me going for the next week or so, which was long enough for me to find myself somewhere far away.
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