When I ate the petal, my whole body turned red. | Shirokuma Literature Club

I ate a petal.

I don't know why I thought to eat it.
I don't know, but if I had to say, that afternoon the sky was overcast, the canned coffee was lukewarm, the bench wood was rotting, and there was an atmosphere as if the whole world was trying to converge toward some single correct answer.
That red petal might have been the final push for that convergence.
When I realized it, it was already in my mouth.
It had almost no taste.
There was a fleeting grassy smell, and then it vanished.
I swallowed it and went home.


That night, when I looked in the mirror after my bath, I had become a tomato.


To be precise, I wasn't a tomato, I still had a human shape, but the color of my entire body was that of a tomato.
My face, my neck, my arms, even the pads of my fingers were a uniform, deep red.
A red so ripe the skin seemed stretched to its limit, a red that made you want to put a price tag on it.
It didn't feel hot to the touch.
It didn't hurt when I pressed it.
I tried bringing my face close to it, but there was no smell either.
It was just red.
After staring at myself in the mirror for about five minutes, I didn't reach any particular conclusion, so I went to sleep.

I was still red the next morning.
Well, I thought, these things happen, and I went to work.

I rode the elevator with Murata.
Murata's expression froze the moment the doors opened.
His mouth, which had started to say something, hung suspended in mid-air, lost.
I didn't know a human face could express 'ineffable' so honestly.

"Good morning."
"G-good morning."

The doors opened.
We both headed to our respective desks.
Murata's 'G-' stayed in my head all day.

Miura, sitting across from me, had been looking at me from the start, and when our eyes met, he peered into his mug.
He peered into it for a long time, very seriously.
He had the look of someone who thought the coffee might tell him something.
It should have been empty long ago.
I didn't know what Miura was looking for, even by noon or by evening.

Everyone I passed in the hallway opened their eyes for just a second, then walked on with a face that suggested nothing had happened.
Not a single person said, 'Are you okay?' that day.
I think they couldn't say it.
What would be okay? Both the person asking and the person answering would be troubled.
They might have been able to say, 'You're red,' but I had already confirmed that in the mirror.

At noon, the salaryman who sat next to me at the diner stood up after three minutes.
The ginger pork was delicious.

On my way home, I stopped by a pharmacy and spent ten minutes looking for something that might be effective for 'symptoms of skin turning red'.
Standing in front of the shelf, I realized that too many medicine boxes are red.
I didn't know where I was standing anymore, so I left without buying anything.
I felt a little calmer after breathing the outside air.

On the third day, Murata asked, 'Is it okay to touch those documents with red hands?'
My hands were just red.
When I answered, 'It's fine,' Murata said, 'I suppose so,' and never brought it up again.
I think he found his own way to accept it.
Humans are remarkable; in two weeks, they get used to the daily life of having a red colleague.
I was the same.
Even when I looked in the mirror, I didn't feel anything in particular anymore.
It's red, I'd conclude.

On the night of Setsubun, beans were thrown at me.

As I was walking through a residential area, there was a family doing the bean-throwing ritual at their front door.
A father and three children.
The moment the father noticed me and started to say something, the youngest child screamed.

"Ogre!"

It was a voice filled with conviction.
There was no doubt at all.
There wasn't even room for debate.

'It's an ogre,' the middle one repeated.
'It's an ogre!' the eldest daughter shouted, and all three threw beans at me at the same time.

One hit my forehead.
One hit my neck.
One slipped through the gap in my coat buttons and rolled around my stomach.
The father was using all his strength to hold back laughter, so he was in no position to stop them.
I ran away.
The children seemed to have a rule about 'not leaving the front of the house,' so they kept shouting 'Ogre out!' until I turned the corner.

I drank a canned coffee alone in a convenience store parking lot.
When I put my hand in my pocket, there were two beans inside.
I stared at them for a long time, then threw them away.

An ogre, I thought.
My forehead hurt a little.

The following Monday, I was chased by a cow.

On my way to the station, a crowd had gathered along the main road.
They said the back of a truck heading to the slaughterhouse had opened, and a cow had escaped.
Several police officers—humans who were clearly physically inferior to the cow—were forming a semicircle to try and surround it.
The onlookers were holding up their smartphones.
It was that kind of morning.

When I peeked through a gap in the crowd, I made eye contact with a cow.

It had large, black eyes.
They were wet, quiet, and seemed to reflect nothing at all.
The cow stared right at me.
It snorted once and scraped the ground with its hoof.
Slowly.
Just once.

That was enough.

By the time I realized it, I was already running.
I heard the sound of hooves behind me.
It was a heavy sound hitting the asphalt, and I felt like the ground was shaking with every step.
I didn't look back.
I was certain that if I looked back, I would trip.
Right at the intersection, left at the next corner, and I dove into a convenience store three blocks away.

The automatic door closed.
The cow didn't come in.

Looking outside through the glass, the cow was standing in the middle of the road, looking at me.
It didn't move.
It just stood there, watching.
The onlookers who had caught up started to surround it again and held up their smartphones.
Some of them were pointing their lenses not at the cow, but at the convenience store glass.

I see, I thought.
The cow got excited because it saw something.
That something was the color red.
It seems this red body of mine acts as a 'run' signal for at least one species of creature on this earth.

I bought a canned coffee while catching my breath.
The clerk at the register said nothing.
The outside became quiet, and I left.
It looked like the police had caught it.

While walking, I thought a little about the cow.
About those black eyes.
A cow that jumped off the back of a truck heading to the slaughterhouse and ran because it saw something red.
It was caught after that, and it will probably be taken back by the end of the day.

I didn't think about anything. I drank the canned coffee.

That Friday, I was sitting on the park bench again.

There was a petal lying at my feet.
It was beige.
I looked around to see which flower it had fallen from, but there were too many trees to tell.

I picked it up and put it in my mouth.

It was faintly sweet and disappeared immediately.

When I got home and looked in the mirror, my skin had returned to its original color.
I guess that happens, I thought.
I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my own face.
I have eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
My hair had grown a little.
I thought I should cut it, but I did nothing.

The next morning, Murata said, 'Huh, did something change?'

'You think so?'

Murata thought for a while.
He looked at me with a slight frown on his forehead.

'Did you get a haircut?'

'I didn't cut it.'

'I see.'

Murata drank his coffee.
And that was the end of it.

It was cloudy outside the window.
It looked like it would rain in the afternoon.
I thought a little about what to have for lunch and decided on ginger pork.
I drank a canned coffee and started working.