A Glowing Worm Called Pork Cutlet

2023 9th - 12th Grade Prose Winner

The inside of the cave was brighter than daylight.

     Katsuro sat cross-legged beside the pool. He submerged his hands in the water while glowing particles dispersed around his fingers. Glow worms clung to stalactites and painted them with strings of luminescent blue—their crawling bodies sprinkled a starscape across the rock. He was enamored to the flickering worms and secretly hoped that one would fall into his hands. Perhaps he would take it home, name it something like Dragon...or Pork Cutlet. Katsuro giggled at the thought of the glow worm Pork Cutlet. He had not eaten a pork cutlet in a very long time, and he was craving one. He missed eating real foods, and he missed eating lunch with Kenjiro and Seki and Aoi...but he scolded himself internally. His mother had told him not to think of his friends too much, lest he make himself sad. She was right; his chest felt terribly tight. He had not seen his friends in a very long time.
     A glow worm dropped from the tip of a stalactite.
     Katsuro leapt to his feet. He splashed through the pool to its other side where he had seen the worm plummet into a lump of white moss. Around his feet, shining planktons and minuscule glimmering fish were startled into panicked bursts across the water. He kneeled onto the patch of moss and combed through its furry mass with his fingers. Water droplets sprayed across the patterned paper of his hospital gown, but he didn’t care. Pork Cutlet would be his!
      He hummed a tune while he moved on to another clump of white moss. Dragonflies, as red as sunset, back when I was young...he remembered the folk song from when he was little. Pork Cutlet, as red as sunset back when I was young...Katsuro giggled. In twilight skies, there on her back I’d ride...his mother used to sing the song to him. His fingers clenched around the moss. When was the last time he had seen his mother? His brothers? Where had he been before this? He spied something among short, wet hairs of moss. He swallowed down the strangeness and delved his hands down into the moss. His palms closed around something wriggling. Pork Cutlet! Mother would be very pleased, even if Katsuro didn’t know where she was. His brothers would be happy, too. “What a delightful new friend!” and “What a miracle!” and “What a marvelous recovery!” He didn’t know why these thoughts bubbled up, but they made sense. Everything seemed to make sense.
      Katsuro slowly drew his hands apart. He wanted to see Pork Cutlet glow. He wanted to see it dance and flutter and transform into a shooting star among the constellations of worms sticking to the stalactites. He wanted to watch it twirl and calligraph luminescent arcs in the air that would linger behind his eyes.
      But when he opened his palms, the glow worm was gone. A frown tugged on Katsuro’s face, but he told himself he wouldn’t cry. This wasn’t worth crying over. After what had come before, he was very brave. Therefore, Pork Cutlet’s disappearance was not worth crying over. But despite himself, Katsuro felt the unwilling prick of tears beneath his eyes. So he sat down next to the pool and cried for a little while.
      When he no longer felt so bad, Katsuro stood. He felt young, and he felt strong, and these were unfamiliar feelings but delightful ones. He leapt across the pool once more and threw himself into a pink cloud of moss. He was lying in the moss breathlessly giggling when he heard someone speak behind him. It was Pork Cutlet! “Katsuro!” the voice called out.      
      “Pork Cutlet! I’m here! Come down!” Katsuro shouted, beaming. All hope was not lost.
      “Down here, Katsuro,” the voice said, and Katsuro saw something poking its head out of the pool.
      “Who are you?” the boy said, a bit rudely.
      “I am your good friend Shikana,” said the fish in the center of the pool. It had no eyes.
      “You’re not my friend. I don’t know you.” Katsuro leaned his head down so he was level with the fish.
      “Yes, but I know you, Katsuro,” the fish said. “I have known you for some time now. Do you know where you are?”
      Katsuro squeezed his eyes shut and made a face. His older brother had taught him that making an ugly face can help you concentrate, and Katsuro had observed this to be true, but right now it wasn’t working.
      “I don’t know,” he said after a little while. “Can you tell me where we are?”
      The fish paused as if thinking.“I suppose that we are somewhere very special,” it murmured, if a fish can murmur. “I am the king of this place.”
      “You are the king?” Katsuro giggled. “But you’re a fish. I’m a person, so shouldn’t I be king?.”      “But you have been here for five minutes,” the fish said, a bit rudely. “Where did you come from?”
      Katsuro frowned. He did not know, but he made his ugly thinking face and tried to reach into his memory. Before here...he remembered his mother, and his brothers and his friends at school. He had not seen any of them in some time now. He had been...he had been...Katsuro’s eyes flew open.
      “The hospital! I was at the hospital. They kept me there for a long time. I had to sleep in a  white bed and wear an ugly paper dress.” He looked down. He was still wearing the hospital gown, and he wrapped his arms around his middle uncomfortably.
      Shikana nodded, and ripples formed in the water around its head. “Do you want to leave this place?” it asked.
      Katsuro didn’t know. “Well, I don’t want to go back to the hospital,” he said. “Why am I here again?”
      “Do you wish to go somewhere else? You will be able to rest there.”
      “But I haven’t spent enough time remembering how I got here,” Katsuro protested.
      “I’m not sure how long you have to figure that out, Katsuro,” said Shikana. “But I can take you somewhere else. You can see your grandma and grandpa, and your old friend Adzuki.”
      Katsuro smiled wistfully. He remembered Adzuki. It had been a long, long time since the  jaunty little dog left home. Katsuro’s mother had told him that Adzuki had returned to the countryside to be with his old family and friends, but Katsuro didn’t believe her. And his grandparents too? He remembered their fragrant home from when he was very young, and he remembered his grandma’s daifuku and his grandpa’s prickly cheek on Katsuro’s face when he kissed him goodnight. His father had told him that they had moved to a new home in the sky. Katsuro wasn’t sure he believed this either.
      “Where will I go?” he asked the fish carefully.
       Shikana swirled its fins in the water while it considered. “I’m not sure, but I know you will be happy there. You won’t have to wear your paper dress, and you will be able to move and jump like you can in here. You can eat as much tonkatsu as you’d like. It’s your favorite food, isn’t it?”
       Katsuro nodded, visualizing a steaming plate of tender fried pork cutlet resting on a clump of shredded lettuce. He could even smell the warm, oily aroma of the meat and imagine the crispy crunch on his teeth. Oh, he had not eaten a pork cutlet in a long, long time...
       “But what about my mother and my father? And my brothers? And what about my friends at school? Will I see them again?”
       “You will, but you may have to wait a little while.”
       Katsuro considered this. He missed his family, but he could wait to see them. Besides, he was good at waiting. He used to wait for hours for his boring classes at school to end. This wait couldn’t be worse than that.
       “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go.”
       He gently pressed his hands to the shore of the pool and leaned forward in a polite bow.  Shikana disappeared under the water. The cave crumbled.

—

      Katsuro’s mother cried. She stared at the flat line on the monitor until her vision turned hazy. She had been stubbornly holding the tears back for a long time, but it was too hard now. She held her beautiful, silent son’s hand.