クラーケンのおすし

なんかの賞に出してたけれどめでたく選外だったので、公開（笑）

隆が体験したこと

隆が体験したこと
　隆は甲板でじっとりと汗をかいていた。夏休みにはまだ暫くある初夏の週末。吹き付ける海風でも体温を奪い切れないほどの湿気と熱。甲板にロープ、日に焼けた男たちの筋肉質な背中。振り向いた伯父がニッと笑いかけ、隆はその歯が白く見えるのに驚く。普段は黄ばんでいるのに。
　「たかしはゲームばっかりだから。どうせ校内作文コンクール、書くネタもないんでしょ」
　そんなことは無い。隆が反論する前に母は田舎に引っ込んだ伯父に電話していた。別に行きたくない訳ではなかったが、金曜夜の英会話のキャシー先生に今週は会えないのがつまらなかった。
　伯父はあちらで、網にかかった魚やらエビやなんかを引き上げている。隆は興味を持ちながらも、それに近寄って良いのかわからない。
　突然、まぶしい太陽の光を黒い影が遮り、次の瞬間に衝撃と共に巨大な白い塊が甲板に叩き付けられた。衝撃、怒号、そしてそれは船首の方へ太い腕を巻き付ける。激しく飛び散る水滴に、駆けまわる海の男たち。彼らは叫びを上げながらも船室外壁に固定された大きな斧や大きなナタを次々と取り外し、甲板を目まぐるしくのたうち回る白く太い触手へ振り下ろす。隆は、目の前で甲板を撫で回す大理石の柱のような腕と、その裏側に整然と並んだ円形の吸盤や鋭い爪を半ば口を開けて眺めている。額から頬を伝って流れた汗の塩気が、唇から舌の付け根まで苦いような感覚と共に染み渡る。
「馬鹿！子供は隠れてろ！」
今朝は優しかった船長が怒鳴り、隆は我に返って飛び退る。奥から斧を振り上げて駆けてくる男性の横をすり抜け、操舵室へ転がり込む。両手で勢いよく引いて閉じた扉に激しくぶつかる何かがあり、その直後に窓の向こうで振り下ろされる斧と水滴をまき散らす触手が光る。隆は自分のチノパンを見下ろして白い鋭い爪が引っかかっているのを見つける。それは3つほど一列に並び、直径は５センチから１０センチほどだ。ラフなシルエットのパンツでなかったらその爪は肌へ達し引き裂いていただろう。ようやくに追いついてきた理解と、同時に全身の力が抜ける感覚で、隆は激しく揺れる床の上へ崩れ落ちる。操舵室の床から見上げると、船首の方では巨大な白い何かがパルテノン神殿の柱のような腕を船体に巻きつけているのが見える。海の男達はそれを、合図を交わしながら叩き切っている。隆は、テレビの特番で見たダイオウイカなど、これに比べればただのイカだと言う判断を自分が下しているのに驚く。夜明け前に伯父の膝を枕にして寝ていた時に耳にした言葉が、「蔵だけんね」というどこか親しみのもてる訛りではなく、クラーケンだったことに気付く。そうだ、あのオジサンもなんとなくお洒落なUターン移住者だった。「だけんね」とは言わないのだ。
　隆が激しく震える手で子供携帯を構え、窓からクラーケン戦う男たちを10分ほど撮影したあたりで、クラーケンはようやくに太い腕を解いてまた暗い海の底へと戻っていった。日に焼けた顔にごま塩頭の船長が操舵室の硝子を叩くと、隆は急いで鍵外して船長に抱き付く。隆はまだ十歳なので、その顔はクラーケンの透明な返り血でベットリと濡れた船長の胸に埋まる。船長は半ば困った顔で笑って、ベタベタした大きな手で隆の頭を掻き回すように撫でる。
「大丈夫だって、慣れてるから。」
そう言って隆を引き離して腰を折ると、狭い室内に無理やり押し込められた古い事務机の下から木箱を引き出し、焼酎の瓶を引き出す。
「これね、アルコール。」
船長はそれから、事務机の引き出しから白いビニール袋を引っ張りだす。地方都市の名前が冠された新聞の名がそのビニールには印刷されている。隆はそれが何であるか予想が付かないまま、船長の後について操舵室を出る。船長は途中でチラリと隆を振り返ったが、何も言わない。甲板の大きな箱の影に、男性が座り込んでいる。「蔵だけんね」の人だ。その肩から背中にかけて、縦に丸い白いものが並んでいる。隆は、それが先程自分のチノパンに刺さっていたのと同じ爪だと気付く。それを外した跡は、規則正しい点線になってパンツに切り取り線を作っている。これが背中に。隆は息を飲む。「クラだけんね」の人の背中に並んだ爪は直径５センチから３センチくらいで、４つくらいある。小さいからといって痛くない訳はなく、一番下の傷の下には血が流れているので正確な爪の数がわからない。
「ケンちゃん、大丈夫か。」
「痛いっすね、はは。」
ケンちゃんと呼ばれた「クラだけんね」の人は、見るからに痛々しいのに、半笑いだ。反して、船長は至って真面目に、半ばぶっきらぼうに言う。
「この爪が締め付けてっからいてえんだ。今、取るからな。」
「えー」
「ホレ、行くぞ。」
船長は焼酎瓶の蓋を開けると、他の人が差し出したペンチにかけ、それからクラダケンネさんの背中にかける。
「くぅぅぅーしみるね、は、ははは。」
クラダケンネさんはそれでもどこか半笑いだ。船長の隣で、タカシの伯父が先程の白いビニール袋を破り、隆はそれが白いタオルだと知る。新聞社の名前が入っている、広告なんだな。そう隆が推測する程度の短い間に、船長はペンチで爪をぐいと引き抜く。クラダケンネさんはいつの間にかベルトを外してそれを齧っている。それが悲鳴を押し留める為の物なのかは隆にはわからなかった。爪が抜かれた跡から流れだした血をアルコールで流すと、今度は新聞社のタオルを押し当てて暫く押しつづける。背中から抜き取られた一番大きな爪は甲板を転がり、隆のスニーカーにあたって止まる。隆はそれを、タオルハンカチでつまんで注意して持ち上げる。そこ並んだ突起はほぼ正三角形で、内側にむかって傾斜している。そして、表面は非常に滑らかで鋭い。
　「え、もう止まったの？」
先ほどベルトを噛んで苦悶していたクラダケンさんが、驚いたように言う。船長が、丸い点線状の古傷だらけの腕を見せながらこともなげに言う。
「カッターで切ったのと同じだからよ。ちゃんと消毒すりゃ、すぐくっつくよ。」
「すげえ。じゃあ、このままでも…」
「このままだと食い込んで肉ごと持ってかれるよ。ほれ、次。」
「やだなあ。」
言いながら背中を差し出し、ベルトを噛む。隆は、そこにいることを黙殺されていながら、いつか自分も彼らと共に戦い、クラーケンの爪痕を得たいと思う。
「ところで…へへ。」
伯父が、笑いながら包丁とまな板をもってくる。そして、手袋をした手で、先程操舵室のところで斧を振り下ろしていた男性から何かを受け取る。そこには、切り落された触手の先がある。切り落とされたばかりのクラーケン触手の先だ。
「これに醤油とワサビが最高なんだわ。酢飯もあるよ。」
隆は、差し出された軍手を無言で受け取り、細かい爪を取る作業を真剣な面差しで始める。

たかしの作文

たかしの作文
　「たかし、すごいの書いたわねぇ。えっと、でも、お魚とエビは？」
お母さんは、隆がノート１２ページに渡って書いた壮大な冒険譚を高く評価しながらも、全く信じようとしなかった。
「すごいね、伯父さんの船とゲームのキャラでこんなお話を作っちゃうなんて。隆、僕もお話に出たいなぁ。山に一緒に行こうよ。」
お父さんは、お母さんのお兄さんにいつも負けている気がしているんだろうな、と隆は思う。伯父さんはマッチョだが、お父さんはお腹が出ている。
　先生はなんて言うだろう。担任の花田先生は自然や野生の動物が好きだ。優しくてキレイで、エコな若い先生だ。もしかしたら、海の生き物を斧でぶった切る話なんて読みたくないかもしれない。隆が原稿用紙の前で、下書きを１２ページも書いてしまったノートと向き合って合っていると、ドアをノックする音がある。
「たかし、伯父さんから」
母がスマホを手渡す。
「ああ、たかし？あのさあ、ちょっとお願いがあって…あのでっかいイカの話、だれかにした？あ、してない？よかった。ちょっと保険の関係でさぁ、怪我の話だけ、言わないでくれるかなぁ。ありがとうね。」
隆がクラダケンネの人のその後に付いて尋ねると、スピーカーフォンになっていたのか、本人が元気な声で返す。
「たかしくーん！ありがとね。めっちゃ元気だよ！また来なね！」
「怪我のこと、隆には言っといたから」
「そうかー隆君、あんがとね！」
その元気な声に微笑みつつも、隆は保険って何の保険だろう、と考える。
　みんな、ダメだ。隆は思った。そもそも、クラーケンとの対決をお母さんが理解してくれるとは到底思えない。お母さんはお母さんなのであって、息子が危険な目に合うことは嫌いなのだ。お父さんも全然信じてない。それに、伯父さんや船長の方が自分よりカッコいいと思われるのが嫌なんだ。それにきっと、花田先生は、普通の作文を期待している。お風呂掃除したとか、博物館へ行ったとか、そういうやつ。犬のウンコ踏んだとか、そういう方がきっとクラーケンよりマシなんだ。なんでもいいよって言ってたけど、そういう、普通のやつがいいんだ、きっと。隆はため息をつくと、机に戻って学習漫画をしばらく読む。少し経ってから、おもむろに原稿用紙に向かう。
　「金曜日の夜から伯父さんと船に乗って、土曜日に大きめのイカをつかまえました。ウデしかつかまえられなかったけど、お寿司にして食べました。おいしかったです。また行きたいなと思いました。」
　そして隆は鉛筆を止める。課題の原稿用紙２枚には到底満たなかったが、それ以上書くべき内容を思いつかなかった。それで、隆は「ところで、イカのお寿司ですが、安全教室で習いました。」と続け、そこから100文字ほど真面目に安全について語り、作文を終えた。それから、「また行きたいな」の文字をゆっくりと指でなぞり、作文用紙をランドセルに収めた。

ENGLISH VERSION What Takashi Experienced

Takashi was sweating profusely on the deck. It was a weekend in early summer, still a while before the summer holidays. The humidity and heat were so intense that the sea breeze couldn't cool him down. The deck, the ropes, the muscular backs of the suntanned men. His uncle turned and grinned, and Takashi was surprised to see how white his teeth were. Usually, they were yellowish.
​"You only play video games. I bet you don't have anything to write about for the school essay contest."
​That's not true, thought Takashi. Before he could object, his mother was on the phone with his uncle, who had moved back to the countryside. It wasn't that he didn't want to go, but he was disappointed he wouldn't get to see his Friday night English teacher, Ms. Cathy.
​His uncle was pulling up a net filled with fish, shrimp, and other things. Takashi was interested but didn't know if he should get closer.
​Suddenly, a dark shadow blocked the blinding sunlight. The next moment, a tremendous white mass slammed onto the deck with a crash. A shock, shouts, and then it wrapped a thick arm around the bow of the ship. Water droplets scattered violently, and the sailors scrambled around. Shouting, they began unfastening large axes and cleavers from the side of the cabin and swinging them down at the thick, white tentacles thrashing wildly across the deck. With his mouth half open, Takashi watched the arm, which looked like a marble column, as it moved along the deck, and the neat rows of circular suction cups and sharp claws on its underside. The salty sweat that had dripped from his forehead to his cheek spread to his lips and the back of his tongue, leaving a bitter taste.
​"Idiot! Kids, get inside!"
​The captain, who had been kind this morning, yelled, and Takashi snapped back to reality and jumped back. He squeezed past a man who was running toward the chaos with an axe raised and scrambled into the pilothouse. Something slammed violently against the door just as he pulled it shut. The next moment, he saw a glittering axe being swung down and a tentacle scattering water droplets through the window. Takashi looked down at his chinos and saw that a sharp white claw was hooked in them. There were three of them in a row, about 5 to 10 centimeters in diameter. If his pants hadn't been loose, the claws would have reached his skin and torn it. A dawning comprehension washed over him, and with a simultaneous sensation of all the strength leaving his body, Takashi collapsed onto the violently swaying floor. From the floor of the pilothouse, he looked up and saw the immense white creature wrapping its arm, like a column from the Parthenon, around the ship's bow. The sailors, exchanging signals, were chopping at it. Takashi was surprised to realize he was thinking that the giant squid he had seen on TV specials was nothing more than a regular squid compared to this. He finally understood that the word he had heard earlier that morning while sleeping with his head on his uncle's lap wasn't some local dialect phrase like "Cracker, can it be?" but rather Kraken. That's right, his uncle was a U-turn migrant who was somehow stylish. He didn't speak with a country twang.
​Takashi held up his phone with trembling hands and filmed the men fighting the Kraken through the window for about ten minutes. At last, the Kraken untangled its thick arm and returned to the dark depths of the sea. The captain, with a tanned face and salt-and-pepper hair, knocked on the glass of the pilothouse. Takashi quickly unlocked the door and hugged the captain. Since Takashi was only ten, his face was buried in the captain's chest, which was sticky with the Kraken's transparent blood. The captain smiled, looking half-troubled, and ruffled Takashi's hair with his big, sticky hand.
​"It's alright, we're used to it."
​With that, he pulled Takashi away, bent down, and pulled a wooden box from under an old, cramped office desk, taking out a bottle of shochu.
​"This is alcohol."
​The captain then pulled a white plastic bag from the desk drawer. The name of a provincial city newspaper was printed on the bag. Takashi followed the captain out of the pilothouse, not knowing what it was. The captain glanced back at Takashi for a moment but said nothing. In the shadow of a large box on the deck, a man was sitting. It was the man he had heard called Clark Ken. A line of round white things was running vertically down his back and shoulder. Takashi realized they were the same claws that had been stuck in his own chinos earlier. The marks they left were a regular dotted line, creating a perforation line on the pants. And now they were on this man's back. Takashi gasped. The claws lined up on Clark's back were about 5 to 3 centimeters in diameter, with about four of them. Just because they were smaller didn't mean they didn't hurt; blood was flowing from the wound at the bottom, so he couldn't see the exact number of claws.
​"Ken, you alright?"
​"It hurts, huh," said the man, called Ken, with a half-smile despite his obvious pain. The captain, in contrast, was completely serious, speaking almost brusquely.
​"They hurt because these claws are gripping your flesh. I'll take them out now."
​"Oh, no."
​"Here, let's do it."
​The captain opened the shochu bottle, poured some on a pair of pliers that another man handed him, and then applied it to Clark Ken's back.
​"Ooh, that stings, ha ha ha."
​Clark still had a half-smile. Next to the captain, Takashi's uncle tore open the white plastic bag, and Takashi realized it was a white towel. The name of a newspaper company was on it; it was an advertisement, he guessed. In the brief moment Takashi was making this assumption, the captain used the pliers to yank out a claw. Clark was now biting his belt. Takashi didn't know if it was to hold back a scream. After the blood from the pulled-out claw was washed away with alcohol, a newspaper company towel was pressed against it and held there for a while. The largest claw that had been pulled from his back rolled across the deck and stopped against Takashi's sneaker. Takashi carefully picked it up with a towel handkerchief. The protrusions on it were almost perfectly triangular and sloped inward. The surface was incredibly smooth and sharp.
​"Huh, it already stopped?"
​Clark, who had been gritting his teeth on the belt, said with surprise. The captain showed his arm, covered with old, dotted scars, and said nonchalantly, "It's the same as a cut from a utility knife. If you disinfect it properly, it'll heal quickly."
​"Wow. So, I could've just left them in?"
​"If you'd left them, they'd dig in and take the flesh with them. Alright, next one."
​"Ugh, I don't want to."
​Saying this, he offered his back and bit the belt again. Takashi, though being ignored, wished he could one day fight alongside them and earn a Kraken's claw mark of his own.
​"By the way… hehe."
​His uncle laughed as he brought a knife and cutting board. With a gloved hand, he took something from the man who had been swinging the axe near the pilothouse earlier. It was the tip of a severed tentacle. The tip of a Kraken tentacle that had just been cut off.
​"Soy sauce and wasabi are the best with this. We've got sushi rice, too."
​Takashi silently took the work gloves offered to him and, with a serious expression, began the task of removing the small claws.
​

Takashi's Essay

​"Takashi, you wrote something amazing, didn't you? But... what about the fish and shrimp?"
​His mother praised the magnificent adventure story that Takashi had written across twelve pages of his notebook but refused to believe any of it.
​"That's great, Takashi, to create a story like this with your uncle's boat and video game characters. Takashi, I want to be in a story, too. Let's go to the mountains together."
​Takashi thought his father probably felt like he always lost to his mother's older brother. His uncle was a macho man, but his father had a belly.
​What would his teacher say? His homeroom teacher, Ms. Hanada, liked nature and wild animals. She was a kind, beautiful, eco-friendly young teacher. Maybe she wouldn't want to read a story about chopping up a sea creature with an axe. As Takashi sat in front of the blank essay paper, facing the twelve pages of draft he had written in his notebook, there was a knock on the door.
​"Takashi, it's your uncle."
​His mother handed him the smartphone.
​"Ah, Takashi? Listen, I have a small favor to ask... Have you told anyone about the story of that big squid? Oh, you haven't? Good. Because of an insurance thing, could you just not mention the part about the injuries? Thanks a lot."
​Takashi asked about what happened to Ken, and as the phone was on speakerphone, Clark Ken himself answered in a cheerful voice.
​"Takashi! Thanks a bunch. I'm doing great! Come back and visit!"
​"I told Takashi about the injuries," his mother said.
​"Oh, is that so? Thanks, Takashi!"
​While smiling at the cheerful voice, Takashi wondered what kind of insurance his uncle was talking about.
​Everyone's no good, Takashi thought. His mother would never understand a confrontation with a Kraken. She was his mother, and she hated the idea of her son being in danger. His father didn't believe it at all. And his father probably didn't want his uncle and the captain to seem cooler than him. And surely, Ms. Hanada expected a normal essay. Something about cleaning the bath, or going to a museum. Stepping in dog poop was probably better than a Kraken. She said anything was fine, but she probably meant a normal kind of "anything." Takashi sighed and went back to his desk to read some educational manga. A little while later, he turned to the essay paper.
​"On Friday night, I rode on my uncle's boat, and on Saturday, we caught a big squid. We only caught an arm, but we made sushi out of it and ate it. It was delicious. I thought I'd like to go again."
​And Takashi stopped writing. It was nowhere near the two pages of essay paper required for the assignment, but he couldn't think of anything else to write. So, Takashi continued, "By the way, about the squid sushi, I learned about it in safety class," and for about a hundred characters, he wrote earnestly about safety before finishing the essay. Then, he slowly traced the words "I'd like to go again" with his finger and put the essay paper into his school bag.

とにかくクラーケンが書きたかったのです。