A story by Kaori Fujino,
translated by Laurel Taylor

The Smartphones Aren’t There Yet
Kaori Fujino
translated by Laurel Taylor

I had important plans that afternoon, so I took the train.
I don’t normally take that line, though I’d ridden it several times before. The day was cloudy, just as bright outside as in the train car. Or just as dim, I should say. I was in luck—there was a sliver of a seat open between two other passengers and when I moved in front of them they both scooched over to give me room to sit. Every other seat was filled. Some passengers were standing. Everyone, man or woman, was gazing fondly down at their smartphones. They were all silent, heads bowed, only the clatter of the train ringing through the car. I too had a smartphone in hand. I’d been clutching it the whole time and now moved it directly beneath my face. When I pressed its button with my thumb, it came to glowing life.
You made it.
I did. I almost didn’t, though. I didn’t think my feet would hurt this much.
It’s because those shoes are brand new.
I might be bleeding.
There is no rain in the forecast. You will arrive at the station in one hour, six minutes. Go out the north ticket gate and take the stairs down to the underground throughfare. Walk for fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes? I can’t walk that far.
From there, take exit 6-B and walk east for five minutes.
What should I do. I’ll buy Band-Aids at the convenience store.
TV personality Mizuna Kawaguchi and pop singer Arata of Innocent in a steamy relationship. Massive wildfires in Chile. This cat loves his bag. Parakeet copies cat perfectly.  Five steps men can take to avoid being accused of subway groping. More than three cups of coffee a day may help prevent high cholesterol. More than three cups of coffee a day may put you at risk of heart disease. Kī is about to see a movie. Matsumoto’s stomach is still upset from that katsudon he ate at lunch. Yacchi is sleepy. Hiroshi Takahashi is sleepy, too. Ponta just woke up. Slept eighteen hours straight but still sleepy.
Yeah. Yeah. I know.
It’ll be fine.
Yeah.
Your dreams will come true.
Yeah. Maybe.
They will. That’s what you’ve been working for all this time.
Yeah. I guess. Sort of.
Almost there.
Yeah. I loved these shoes so much. I bought them especially for today. But my feet hurt.
For a convenience store, take exit 6-A rather than 6-B. Exits A and B are on opposite sides of the crosswalk. You won’t get lost.
Crap. Nylons. I have to take off my nylons in order to put Band-Aids on my blisters.
The bag you’ve been debating buying for an entire week has sold out. The butterfly-print dress is back in stock, but only a few left. This is how you divide pothos plants. It’s easy. All dinosaurs had feathers. Dinosaurs, feathers, color. Scientists are now identifying those colors. The method for identification is already well established.  Today is Makiko Miyamoto’s birthday.
Yeah. Yeah. It is.
Even sitting, my feet throbbed. Earlier, on my walk to the station, I could tell that with each step the skin rubbing against my shoe was loosening, separating from the flesh beneath. I tripped onward with a shortened stride, telling myself I was a machine. Machines don’t feel pain.
I gazed at my smartphone, and it gazed back. It was a little too big for my hand, yet still small—a perfect, hard rectangle; the oil from my fingers had left cloudy streaks here and there on the screen. I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped it down. A smartphone is nothing like a person. A smartphone is not a person. It’s something like the world, but it is not the world either.
Japanese Diet votes to delay sales tax hike. Stalker-murderer incident. Mass shooting. What would you like to know? Man-eating alligator. Three victims. Giant squid eyeballs are the size of a softball.
Yeah. Thanks. Really.
Want to kill zombies?
I tilted my phone on its side and killed zombies for a while. The illustrations are very American—zombies with childishly huge heads and skinny limbs. The zombies make cute groans as they die and disappear, but since I was on the train, my phone was muted. Silently the zombies appeared, one after another, walking faster than I thought they should, dying under my fingertip.
When I want to know something my encyclopedic smartphone can’t tell me, I kill zombies.
I want to know if today will go well. If it will live up to my expectations.
I’m frightened. Today, tonight, my life might move on to the next level. A welcome direction. I’m wishing for that from the bottom of my heart, but at the same time, I feel like I want to remain at a standstill.
I want to know my future. I want to know my past. The train rattled on. My feet hurt. I stabbed at the screen with my finger. You’re doing all right. But you’re still faulty. You have to keep growing. You know my academic history—I posted it to social media, after all, and you have notes from the seminar I was enrolled in. You know what kind of cake I had yesterday—I wrote about it on social media. What I want isn’t only that, though—I mean I want that, too—but I also want a you who can tell me everything I should know. You have to develop the ability to search every single one of my memories. If there’s something vital I’ve forgotten, you have to present it to me: “Your memory recommendations.” You have to tell me if I’m okay right now, if I’m going to be okay. And if I’m not going to be okay, if there’s no chance for me, you have to hide the fact that I’m not going to be okay from me.
You will be able to do this eventually. Hurry up and evolve. Hurry up and become something more than the machine you are now, something else. Come on. In the Edo period, they believed objects that lasted a century became spirits and monsters, but there’s no way any of you lot will last that long. The general concept of smartphones is a different matter, though. It’s okay, I know you can do it. That’s what progress is after all. And we’re already helping you so much. Let’s do this, together.
I killed zombies, checked tomorrow’s weather, killed zombies again. Kill, kill, kill. I know what I’m killing is my own present. My mind is enthralled by the faint pleasure of it. It would be nice, I think, if death felt like this.

Something brighter even than my smartphone suddenly tangled in my eyelashes.
I raised my head.
I wasn’t the only one looking up. Everyone was. Some looked up sooner than me, and some looked up a few seconds after. Either way, we were all looking.
Everyone on my side of the car was looking straight across the way through the window, and everyone on the opposite side of the car was looking at the window behind our heads. I was certain they were seeing the same thing we were.
Sashes of gleaming red clouds stretching freely, completely, across the sky. The higher the sky, the darker it became. Layers upon layers of clouds crossing each other, shining translucent, bright, the color of flesh. The light struck my face. The other passengers, too, were struck by the light.
Passengers began to raise their smartphones. Automatically, I did the same.
Look. It’s amazing.
I knew the smartphones’ camera lenses weren’t capable of capturing those colors.
In their screens, the sky was small, its power diminished, the flesh-colored gleam washed out beyond recognition. It looked cute, fleeting, approachable.
I turned my eyes from the screen to the light beyond the window. Already the sashes of color had grown fluffier, the flesh color darkening, glinting at us as if with a menacing eye.
Look how beautiful. Sunset.
Not sunset. Sunrise.
What? I pushed my smartphone’s button. To check the date. In that instant, the screen went dark. I ran my finger over the glass, pushed the button again and again, but it was useless. Apparently the battery was dead. But what about my evening, my important plans?
My feet still hurt. The loosened skin was hardening, leather and flesh pressed tight together, wounding each other. If anything, the pain was getting worse. Still the train ran on and on, its rattling ringing through the car. Those sitting remained sitting, those standing remained standing, no one moved a muscle. The blazing light, apparently no longer interested in us, departed, and the sky took on the semblance of paper that had been crumpled and spread out again, until eventually the clouds cleared, leaving a faintly gentle, uniform blue, and we, in silence, exchanging not even a glance, looked straight ahead.

Translator: Laurel Taylor

Laurel Taylor (b. 1989) is a translator, writer, and PhD student in Japanese and comparative literature at Washington University in St. Louis. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and currently works as an assistant managing editor for Asymptote. Her translations include fiction and poetry by Yaeko Batchelor, Aoko Matsuda, Noriko Mizuta, and Tomoka Shibasaki. Her translation of “Someday with the One, the Perfect Bag” by Kaori Fujino appears in vol. 3 of MONKEY.

Author: Kaori Fujino

Kaori Fujino (b. 1980) is an award-winning author. Her debut work of fiction, “Greedy Birds,” was awarded the Bungakukai Newcomers Prize in 2006, and her novel Nails and Eyes won the Akutagawa Prize in 2013. In 2017 she was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. Her story “You Okay for Time?” was translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and appeared in Granta in 2017. “Someday with the One, the Perfect Bag,” translated by Laurel Taylor, is featured in vol. 3 of MONKEY.

More stories by Kaori Fujino