the scientific method
cause and effect

one

Rin hates her. (effect)
(cause: to be determined)

Yukio doesn't believe in love. (effect)
(cause: unknown trauma of some kind)

No one believes you when you tell them you can see the future. You told a boy, once, that he was going to get hit by the 22 bus heading for Shinjuku station. He told you to fuck off and died the next day. Coincidence, scoffed your classmates. You're nothing. You're a freak. You had replied by saying that they shouldn't go to that karaoke bar they had been talking about, something bad was going to happen. The girl who laughed the loudest got mugged.

But that was a long time ago (four months, three days, twenty-one hours, six minutes), and you're not counting.

At True Cross Academy people are going to accept you, you'll make them. That's what your Great Grandpa Sawtooth had said, and you're great grandpa knows everything there is to know. You could talk to him about anything because he has the same gift as you. He gives you lots of good advice, tells you to never close your eyes or cover your ears. His dream journals are your favourite things to read.

The day of your departure he packs you up with a jar of molasses with strict instructions to eat one tablespoon every morning. "Molasses," he said, "is how I survived getting all the way over here from Louisiana. And during the war, I lived off molasses for six weeks! It's also how I managed to woo your great-grammy." Then he shook his head, said "molasses" again and laughed roundly. You remember seeing little white hairs growing out of his ears and laughing too.

You don't know how molasses can make someone love you and you don't think anyone can live off only molasses for six whole weeks, but your great grandpa's a crappy liar and you'll believe anything he tells you – even if it is an unproven theory. So you figure you'll eat a tablespoon of molasses before breakfast because it's what you've been doing ever since you came to live with Great Grandpa Sawtooth and it'd almost be a shame to stop now.

At the train station, you pull yourself together, kiss Great Grandpa Sawtooth on both cheeks and try not to cry. He holds your hand until he can't hold it no more, and your fingers slip from his; it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth, your departure. You want to stay with your great grandpa forever, until he dies, so you can bury him next your parents and your grandparents, amongst the dripping pines of the north.

On the train, you spend your time flipping through the school's promotional pamphlet and drinking black coffee from a pink travel mug. The pamphlet boasts the teachers and the campus, explaining that it is an old and prestigious institution for the rich and talented. You're not rich by any means, but your partial scholarship and the money your parents left will pull you along just fine. The pictures are glossy and brightly coloured, all showing smiling students in perfectly pressed and starched uniforms, carrying hefty texts bound in brass and leather. The school itself looks very classy and very old, and huge. It looks European, you think, though you've never been to Europe.

Your old school was practical and modern, all smooth concrete and stainless steel, grey on grey, nothing like this. You'll almost miss the plain white walls, the narrow windows and linoleum floors. You'll miss bringing lunches from home and being able to see your great grandpa every day.

You look up and accidentally meet the eyes of the woman across from you. In an instant you see her work place, her sitting behind her desk, her heading outside for a smoke. You see her going home to her son and her tucking him into bed with a kiss and a soft, friendly story. You see her with more grey in her hair and an IV in her arm. There are tubes up her nose connected to an oxygen tank and a heart monitor beeps in the corner. A slightly older version of her son is outside the room with who you think must be her husband. The husband is whispering with a doctor and frowning very deeply.

You smile wanly at her and she smiles wanly back. There are cigarettes in her purse.

The train takes three hours, twelve minutes, thirty-six seconds: too long. Your application papers speak of a principal's office and a course list. Great Grandpa Sawtooth applied you for the cram school without your consent and you have it every single day after school. At least in middle school, cram was only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

You are picked up at the front gate by a teacher who does not speak to you. He stands tall and rigid, hands behind his back and coat crisp. The students you see through the classroom windows don't look like the ones from the flyer; they look like normal teenagers, bored and sleepy, slumped over their desks. Saturday sun the colour of wildflower honey shines down on them through the open windows. You decide at that moment, that you will tell no one how they are going to die or what they are having for dinner in two weeks' time or anything. You will be normal, so normal, and they will like you.

"Here's a school map," says the teacher abruptly. You bump into his back and he turns, proffering a neatly folded diagram of the academic buildings. "This here is your classroom. Lunch is in two hours. At that time, please find the director's office and speak with him. There are no classes this afternoon, which should give you sufficient time to settle in. Your bags will be taken to your room. I know that you are with our cram school program, so please be sure to get there on time."

"Yes," you reply. "Um, thank you."

He doesn't respond, just swivels on his heel and marches away, like a little tin soldier. You wonder if he ever slouches or bends his elbows.

It takes nine deep breaths and a slow count backwards from ten to open the door and peek inside.

"Hello," you say meekly. The window is open. Worst case scenario, you will jump out of it and die. At least then you will be spared any embarrassment.

"Ah!" cries the teacher. She's a frumpy old bat with a pillbox hat and antique jewellery glittering at her wrists and neck and ears. She shines like a star. "You must be the new student! Please introduce yourself quickly and find a seat. I trust you know your quadratic functions?"

"Erm," you say profoundly, feeling self-conscious. Your stomach hurts. You want to go home. Everyone is looking. Maybe your ribbon is lopsided, or your shirt is un-tucked. "Yes. My name is Sato. Sato Mamirin. I come from Chiba. P-please take good care of me."

"Thank you, Sato-san," huffs the teacher, adjusting the belt cinching her sizeable waistline. "Grab a seat. Copy down the notes on the board. Let's get this class up and running again! One two, heave ho!"

You take a seat close to the door, in the middle row and you hear everything. Look at her hair! It's so light! Is she American? Yes, you think. No, no, her face is Japanese! Yes, you think. You wonder if they've never seen a mixed race girl before.

Mathematics and English are your strongest subjects and those areyour only two classes for the morning. You breeze through them and try to answer some questions, but not too many, because then maybe you'd seem pompous and stuck-up or like you thought you were smarter than everyone else. You want to be well-liked and popular here, unlike at your old school, where you were the witch girl with no friends.

You click your tongue against your teeth.

The map in your bag is confusing, poorly labelled and hard to read. The only things clearly marked are the cafeteria and the third-floor toilets. You chew on a Pop Tart while you navigate the hallways, searching for the headmaster's bureau. You are very glad for your great grandpa, who introduces you to wonderful American inventions, like Pop Tarts.

All the regular students who live off campus are already gone by the time you find the director.

In middle school, the principal worked in a cramped room, squeezed uncomfortably between his desk and the wall, even though he was not a fat man, hidden behind piles of paper work. His suit was always a little rumpled, but his eyes were kind behind his wire-framed glasses. You remember seeing his funeral, how old his weeping wife had been, and being comforted in knowing he'd live a long time.

Here, though, the director dresses like a circus ring leader and his workspace is so large it could host a class of forty. His skin is pale but unlined. He looks too young, not like someone any responsible parent would trust their child's education with. You fold your hands behind your back to hide your white, white knuckles.

"Ah, Sato-san! What a pleasure to finally meet you," says the director charmingly, he bows with a flourish and kisses the back of your hand. His smile makes your skin crawl. "As you know, I am the headmaster of this fine establishment. Mephisto Pheles, at your service."

What a strange name, you think to yourself. "Yes. Nice to meet you, too. Thank you for meeting me."

"Don't worry about it," says Mephisto Pheles. He has a voice like a snake's, dry and cunning. "Now, you're going to be staying in the girls' dorm on the west side. Here's your room key. You'll be bunking with three other girls, like all first years do. Also, here's a key to get you into the cram school classrooms. Someone will come around to pick you up since it's your very first day, but make sure you don't lose it! Keys are important, you know." He drops you a conspiratorial wink like he's just shared a secret.

"Right," you say, and don't look at him. "I promise I won't."

"There's a good girl! Run along now! Cram classes start at eight o'clock in the evening, so have a hearty lunch now and a hearty supper later! We can't have you tuckered out before the day is done!"

You leave, not turning your back to him (effect). The second you close the door behind you, you run (effect).

(cause: you do not know why)

As expected, food is outrageously priced in the cafeteria (cause). Fortunately, your Great Grandpa Sawtooth has blessed you with enough food to last you a month, maybe two if you ration it properly. You will live off of Pop Tarts, cereal, molasses, dried fruit and powdered milk (effect).

Still, your roommates are kind and invite you to eat dinner with them, so you follow along and get something small to not seem out of place. You explain it away with having a big lunch mixed with homesickness. Then you fade away as they swap stories of their own first days at school. They'd been coming here since before you'd even started living with Great Grandpa Sawtooth. They all have such lovely smiles, such charming laughs.

You slip away and know they won't even notice.

Surprisingly, it is your round and exuberant math professor who comes to take you to cram school. She explains with utmost seriousness how to use the key you've been given and you try not to say something stupid, like 'what the fuck?' or 'you're shitting me.' You wonder if Great Grandpa Sawtooth knew what he was signing you up for. You are going to write him a very angry letter. You might even ship his molasses back to him. It would teach him right.

Despite leaving at seven-thirty for an eight o'clock class, you are predictably late anyways. You tuck your chin down to your chest. You show up late in the year and then go about disturbing classes. You feel bad. But—but the teacher is the guy you could have sworn was in your English course and—and you are so lost. What.

"Sato-san," says the teacher. "You're late."

"Sorry." You don't like it when teachers do that. You're late. You know it. He knows it. Everyone else fucking knows it. Why do they have to say it out loud?

"Introduce yourself and find a seat. I'm Okumura Yukio, your demon pharmacology teacher."

Demon pharmacology. Either you are suddenly hard of hearing or you are in the wrong place. You say, "I think I have the wrong classroom."

"You don't," assures Okumura.

Just go with the flow, you tell yourself. You turn to the class; there aren't many people at all. They stare at you expectantly. "I'm Sato." You bow so you don't have to look at their faces, because then you might see something, and you wish you were blind to the possible, the inevitable, the to-be. You wish you'd never have to see another future again in your whole life; it has never helped you, never helped anyone else. "Please take good care of me."

"Good then. Take a seat. Have you attained mashou, Sato-san?"

"Excuse me?"

Okumura's lips go thin with impatience, but he remains courteous and calm. You look at his chin and not his eyes. Life would be easier if you never knew the colour of anyone's eyes; the soul was in the eyes, therefore the future was also in the eyes.

"I'll take that as a no," he says. "You're going to have to attain it quickly, so you'll be able to see demons and complete your class assignments."

You nod and consider making a run for it.

Instead, you sit behind a blonde girl and stare resolutely down at the desk. Okumura fires question after question about things with strange names, asks what they're used for, where you can find them. The blonde chickadee is locked in a non-competitive answering melee with the guy four seats over, two rows back. His hair reminds you of a skunk's stripe.

The class ends with Okumura promising to quiz everyone on the things they had covered and as fast as you can, you gather your things and bolt.

Wouldn't it be just like you, to hit someone?

The boy who was sitting next to the little blonde girl stumbles and you reel backwards, arms pinwheeling and just for a second, one awful brutal terrible second, he looks at you.

It's something out of a nightmare. Fire burns blue and there is the stink of rotting and death. Phantom figures with curling horns and milky, sightless eyes touch your face as though they know you are there. You are up to your ankles in blood, and you think it might be the boy's; his eyes are blue. There is a taste, sour and foul, in your mouth, like infection.

"You're so young," you wheeze.

And then you throw up.

Great Grandpa Sawtooth's Seeing the Future Guide, Lesson #1:
Do not turn away from the inevitable. Do not ever be afraid. Inevitably preys on the weak.

Great Grandpa Sawtooth's Seeing the Future Guide, Lesson #2:
The future is not set in stone, but do not try to change what you see; calamity will surely follow. Feel free to pray, though the Lord never helped me.

"I heard you were sick in cram school," says the director when you wake up. He hands you a cup of water. You're in the infirmary, and you vaguely recall Okumura dragging you by your armpits across the lawn. It smells like disinfectant. "What did you see?"

"What?"

Director Pheles rolls his eyes and sighs in an way that makes you angry. "No need to hide your little secret from me, Sato-san. I know all about it from your great grampy. Why, Sawtooth and I go way back! So tell me, what did you see?"

"How do you now my grandpa?" you ask. You don't want to think about what you saw, let alone recite it for someone you barely know. Perhaps you would have told your great grandpa, but not this strange man with his strange close and strange eyes.

"He worked for me," explains Director Pheles, buffing his nails on his waistcoat and looking bored. "For many years, in fact. Sawtooth was one of the finest exorcists around in his day."

"What are you talking about?" It occurs to you a second later that you should be more polite with the dean, especially since you have barely known him for a single day. But you cannot bring yourself to care. There is a dull ache in the back of your neck and your eyes are sore, as if you'd been staring at a computer screen for many hours.

Director Pheles laughs and slaps his thigh, like he's just heard a very good joke. "Sato-san, are you really telling me that Sawtooth didn't tell you? You're here for a reason, Sato-san. You're going to be an exorcist, just like your great grandpa. Now, how 'bout you tell me exactly what you saw and then I'll explain everything? Get you seeing demons in a jiffy."

"Stop it," you say.

"Stop what?" His eyes are narrow and his smile is thin but toothy. He's making fun of you, just like your old classmates used to. His mocking leaves a sour taste on your tongue.

"Lying," you say.

He sighs, pats your arm. You curl away from him. "Didn't Sawtooth teach you?" he says. "Don't turn away from the inevitable. You will be an exorcist, and you will help me. Your power could prove invaluable in our never ending battle against demons."

"I don't have to do anything," you say, "and I don't have to put up with this shit. Call my grandpa. Send me home. Demons aren't real."

First, Mephisto's smile is wide and narrow and ugly, and then it is more normal, like the two of you are friends. You know you are not friends. You do not trust this man.

You do not trust him, Sam I Am.

Rin wonders. (effect)
(cause: bitch who threw up on him)

Yukio wonders. (effect)
(cause: new student threw up on brother)

You spend the day in bed. Your roommates have left you a note, explaining that they're going into the city for the weekend and that you can borrow their shampoo if you need to. You think that's the nicest thing anyone has ever offered you. You decide that you'll make more of an effort to befriend them; you know that at least two of the girls are in your math class.

Perhaps you should go out and explore the grounds, get to know the place better, or maybe you should start on that letter to your great grandpa (logical). But you don't want to. Instead you eat three chocolate Pop Tarts and make origami cranes out of the wrappers that fall back into rumpled silver sheets (illogical). You trip getting out of the shower and hit your face on the sink (cause). Your nose bleeds (effect) and you clot it with your pillow case. You think all those Pop Tarts are making you sick because you start to feel nauseous and then throw up about eight minutes later.

You spend the rest of the evening ripping the pages out of your favourite novel. You're so angry and you can't even place the source of your fury. You think it's dispersed. It's stemming from the director and your great grandpa and that Okumura and the boy who dies young, your roommates who went into the city and the stupid little girl who sat in front of you, the ridiculous questions and your math teacher's ugly lipstick.

You fold the pages of your book into cranes and then crush them in your fist because it makes you feel better. You pretend page one-hundred-and-three is the director and you tear the wings off, then the head. Page six is Okumura. Page twenty-nine is the blue-eyed boy who dies young. Thirty-seven becomes the blond one. Two-fifty-two is your great grandpa. Your math teacher is page ninety-four.

You do this with every single person you've ever met, even if you can't remember their names. The woman from the train, you think. Her son, her husband, her unborn grandchildren. Soon every single page is a tiny, broken crane on the floor. You feel bad for making a mess, so you sweep them all into the dustbin and then cry for no real reason.

It's nine thirty-two.

You want to go home. Not to your house in Chiba where you've lived with Great Grandpa Sawtooth on the sea, but to your real home, where you grew up with your baby brother and your mum and your dad. You miss them most. You remember a big house in a field, a small village nearby, a row of classmates in blue shorts and yellow hats. You remember lullabies, the dark, round eyes of your mother and your father's stubble when he hugged you in the morning and kissed your face.

It's about that time of year again; you'll have to burn some incense for them soon.

They say that the reason demons are so terrible is because they reflect the hidden desires of humans; the most perfect mirror. (unproven theory)

You've always had strange dreams; Great Grandpa Sawtooth said it came with the package. Sometimes they make sense, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they're scary, and sometimes they aren't. Today, you dream of the past, of when you were nine years old, eight months before you moved in with Great Grandpa Sawtooth, and he took you to Louisiana. He'd been born and raised there, and told you about it all the time. Whenever you asked him why he ever came to Japan, he just laughed and told you 'business, sweetheart.'

Back then, 'business' had been a pretty okay answer, and at the time, you hadn't questioned it. You'd been too busy holding your great grandpa's hand in church, listening to his gentle voice while he paddled you up and down the bayous which he knew so well.

One day, the two of you had gone for a picnic lunch. He'd taken you to a little islet in the middle of a river, where the Spanish moss hung from the trees, almost touching the water. The two of you sat in the shade, away from the alligators, which lay sunning, their blonde mouths gaping. You hadn't questioned that, either. Your grandpa would keep you safe. That was all there was to it, all there ever had been.

"Here, Mamirin," he said, packing away unfinished egg salad and apple slices with peanut butter. "I'll show you what I did in my prime."

The gators were already sliding back into the water to cool, but Great Grandpa Sawtooth wrapped his hands around the tail of the last one and yanked it back ashore. It thrashed and bellowed, twisting, jaws snapping. You screamed. But your great grandpa moved quick as flash leaping atop the gator's back and closing his fingers over its closed mouth.

"Look, see," he said, "they are strong one way, and weak in others. Don't be afraid. Even you could hold it closed. Come here, sit on its back. It's important to know what power feels like."

So you had, and it had been horrible and wonderful at the same time. You're looked into the alligator's narrowed, alien eyes and hadn't seen a thing. You had wished you could just spend all day, every day for the rest of your life, looking at alligators. Maybe they did not have future within them because they didn't care about things like that. You wished, desperately wished, that you didn't care about the future.

Eventually, your great grandpa had lifted you away and beat the gator back into the water.

With both your arms around his neck, he'd said, "Just remember, Mamirin, you can't teach monsters like that to love you."

"I need you to go save the cute new student now, okay, Okumura-kun?"

You pray to change the future. You see your own death. Your roommates will come back and find you painted across the walls. red. Demons are real. Part of you is telling you to scream, because then someone will hear you and they will come save you, but all that comes out is blood and spit.

Your nose is bleeding again and your ears are ringing. Something warm and wet is trickling down your neck. You can't keep your balance as you stumble out into the hallway. You keep tripping.

The demon stinks like soured milk, and you think that all the girls in the dorm must be smelling it in their sleep and having nightmares. The walls dip and bulge sickeningly. Your own bones seem to be shifting beneath your skin.

This is what fear feels like.

If your great grandpa was an exorcist and spent his days seeing these monsters, you do not want to be an exorcist. You want to be a florist or a hairdresser. Something safe and normal. Anything but this.

Your think your left leg might be injured. The angle of tibia to knee – approximately 33 degrees clockwise from the vertical – is highly abnormal and it will no longer support your weight. When you try to stand, your right leg works as is proper, but you keep falling. However, there is no pain. Conclusion: it is not injured.

You also think you might have suffered some sort of head trauma (cause). You cannot seem to find the end of the hallway, which you know leads to the stairs, which lead to outside, which leads to help (effect i). You lean over and vomit, again and again, even when your insides are empty (effect ii).

You wish you were dead (effect iii).

To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.

Amen.