My all-girls’ high school was occasionally visited by crabs. The first time I noticed one was during my first year, on a damp day in early summer. The crab crept along a peripheral walkway where the thick, humid air swirled near the ground. Its gray-green eyes peeked from a small, rounded shell the color of wet sand, and its legs produced a soft, scuttling sound. I halted abruptly, nearly colliding with a classmate trailing behind me. She gave me a suspicious look. I opened my mouth to speak, but my tongue felt dry and the words stuck to the roof of my mouth. Before I could say anything, the crab slid away. My classmate’s thin eyebrows drew together in irritation.
To my sense, the crabs drifted here from a nearby river. Tall reeds lined the embankments on both sides, and though the shore seemed distant, I could almost hear the sea in the air. The water level rose and fell with the days, the rhythm of the month slowly shifting. Sometimes only the tips of the reeds and their seed heads appeared above the murky water, other times the entire stand stood exposed, offering a view of crabs scurrying at their bases. Each morning, after leaving the station, I crossed the river on a bridge. I never spotted a crab on the way to the bridge, but once I crossed that point, as I drew nearer to the school, countless crabs lay crushed on the road. The sun baked their shells, releasing a harsh stench. Crows pecked at the living and the dead, and cars reduced the shells to fragments. Any crabs that reached the school wandered through the corridors, the schoolyard, the flower beds, and even the classrooms. They seemed lost, wandering from place to place in search of something. Whenever I spotted one, my gaze fixed on it. The other students watched me with wary eyes. Perhaps they noticed crabs more than I did, avoiding them or pretending they didn’t exist. If a crab happened to end up inside someone’s indoor slippers, they would continue into the building wearing only socks. Crab shells, whole or in shards, appeared all over the school, swept up with dust and fallen leaves and other litter, bagged, and ferried behind the buildings toward the incinerator. In those days, the incineration was managed by the school janitor, a stout, middle-aged woman. The students nicknamed her “the old girl,” and even some teachers used that name—“Someone go fetch the old girl to clean up this broken glass.” “Hey, you know what she does sometimes, that old girl?” One day, during a weekly cleanup shift, I overheard two students whispering. “She throws live crabs straight into the incinerator. She just grabs them with tongs and tosses them in. You can smell it—it’s strong, and briny.” “Really? That’s creepy.” “I wonder why she does it.” “That old girl has had a really hard life.” “How old do you think she is?” “Maybe sixty? Seventy? But to do that to crabs . . .” I strained to hear their talk, but within the next minute they shifted to the PE teacher, whom many of the girls had a crush on. “Did you know Hara-sensei came second in college track-and-field championships? He was almost nationally competitive!” “How cool is that?!” “If he hadn’t injured that leg . . . he’d still be training.” “He still looks sooo ripped.” I’d once seen the PE teacher step on a crab in the corridor. I couldn’t be sure if it was accidental or deliberate, but the way he kicked the shattered shell off the back of his heel looked almost rehearsed. His sweatpants clung to his muscular calves. Hara-sensei always carried a green-apple scent with him. “That shampoo of his—how can anything smell that good!” “And that curly hair!” “Where can I buy that shampoo?” “What, you want to smell like him?” “What if he notices? Well? What does that matter!”
One day, after PE class, Hara-sensei chose me to put away all the equipment. I wasn’t particularly athletic, so it was probably random. Yet my classmates made a fuss, and he wore a sly smile—his narrow, sharply cut chin catching the sunlight off the field. After tucking everything away, I wandered along the edge of the campus. Something inside the bushes beyond drew my attention: a rectangular block, roughly knee-high, about six inches on each side, protruding from the ground. It appeared granite, with white flecks on a gray surface, its edges worn smooth. One side bore faint inscriptions, but the text was barely legible, as if scraped away. I hadn’t noticed it before. The tree shadows flickered across it as the breeze moved. It resembled a gravestone in miniature. “What are you doing?” The janitor stepped out from a gap in the trees, cheerful as ever. She wore overalls and a straw hat, a towel around her neck, pruning shears in hand, sweat gleaming on the white makeup of her face. “What are you doing?” she repeated. I hesitated. “I found this.” My voice was hoarse; I hadn’t spoken to anyone in a while. I pointed to the grave marker at our feet. “Did you trip on it?” she asked. “Sorry?” “You didn’t stumble over it, did you?” I knew I was the clumsiest student in class, but I wouldn’t have toppled over something so small. I shook my head, and the janitor’s cheerful expression returned. “Good. You wouldn’t want to trip and hurt yourself.” “What is it?” I asked. My heart hammered. “It’s a marker. For where the old shoreline used to be,” she said simply, and clipped the tip from a branch of pale-pink berries with her shears. “The shoreline?” “These places have been filled in so many times that the sea has been pushed back, but it used to come up to this very point.” She gestured toward the school grounds, where moments earlier girls had been running and leaping. “The sea there. A broad beach there.” A wind blew across the dry brown grass, lifting grains of sand like fine sugar. It was midday break, and the grounds were empty. On the far side of the field, the gym entrance loomed as a dark void. “It’s strange, when you really think about it,” the janitor continued. “They dump earth and sand into the sea, tamp it down, build a school and houses and roads everywhere, parcel the land out, and live there without a second thought.” So, I realized, there used to be sea here. I looked down at my sneakers. White shoes were mandatory, but mine were scuffed and gray. The janitor returned to pruning the bushes—tiny, clear quartz beads scattered on the ground. “When I was a child, this entire area had already been filled in. See those low huts for construction workers? I was about your age when they worked here. Back then, they built by tossing whatever they had into the sea—garbage, debris, and such—and covering it with sand. When the trash reached the waterline, they brought in horses and made them pace around in circles across it. The ground sank, water seeped up, and the hooves churned through mud. Then they brought in more sand by truck… Can you imagine such methods today? Horses slogging through mud…” “Wow,” I breathed. “It is strange, isn’t it.” “Indeed. And for you, it may feel like distant history, but to me it happened almost yesterday. When I was young, people told us the area was polluted and the soil rotten. Yet when my parents were kids, they gathered shellfish on the nearby beach and cooked them right over there.” And crabs, too? I wondered. There must’ve been hundreds of them, roaming these sand dunes. The janitor squinted toward the horizon, shielding her eyes from the sun with a hand. I followed suit, and we both looked out. Roofs of ramshackle buildings rose in the distance. The sea had definitely been there once? It sounded impossible. “And they’re still at it. They’re still trying to fill the sea and make more land. When will they stop? And what would be the point if the population is shrinking? When I had my daughter, I thought, surely by the time she grows up, they’ll have stopped landfilling. But no. If anything, it seems to be accelerating.” “Wait, so you have a child?” I asked, surprised. She chuckled. “A child, yes.” Then: “Shouldn’t you head back? You’ll miss lunch.” “All right.” “You should eat more. You’re too skinny. Put on a little weight. You’re delicate. You’ll learn to be strong in time.” “I will?” “Yes. Sooner than you think. You’ll understand it all in the years to come. You girls have no idea what’s coming.” The janitor resumed her steady clipping of the bushes. The clipped berries lay around the marker like petals. So, all of this had been the sea. The shoreline had come up here, perhaps centuries or even longer ago: The crabs had visited because that memory called them back. They would arrive to find no sea, wandering in search of something that no longer existed. I pushed the classroom door open. Inside, voices erupted—a chorus of chatter, squeals, and sudden bursts of noise, rising up and then dipping before climbing again. The room smelled of lunchboxes. I walked to my desk, and there, atop my neatly folded uniform, lay a crab. A dead crab, facing me. I stared at it. The din around me sharpened into whispers and snickering. I picked up the crab. It was intact, its legs and claws whole. It was dry and weightless. It looked like a perfect specimen for a lab, dead and unadorned. The class gradually quieted as I studied its dull sand-colored eyes. For a moment I thought I saw my own reflection in them. I imagined the crab muscles, slick with sea water, sprinting across the glistening dunes. A classmate, who had likely been to the school store, entered and froze, sensing the mood shift. Everyone watched the quiet, plain girl in her gym shorts, with whatever lay in her palm. “What’s going on?” she mouthed. Without waiting for a reply, I took the crab, placed it beside my uniform on the desk, and, with brisk efficiency, changed out of my gym clothes. As I buttoned my blouse, the room erupted again into chatter. Once I was fully dressed, I slid the crab into a pocket in the pleats of my skirt. Someone hissed loudly. The crab fit snugly, a light weight in my pocket, barely noticeable. I had already been walking with my head bowed; I wasn’t about to lift it now. On my way home, I paused on the bridge and cast the crab into the river. The shell was so light that the breeze carried it for a moment before it sank. Just before it disappeared beneath the surface, I thought I glimpsed a flicker of movement in its pincer. Was it the river or did my hands still smell of the sea? The memory tasted of blood. After that day, I began visiting the marker of the shoreline from time to time. There was nothing truly there. I never ran into anyone. It was a secluded spot, surrounded by trees and the school grounds, with the buildings hidden from sight. One afternoon, I spread a large handkerchief on the ground, sat down, and attempted to sense the waves beneath me, the tides, the pull of currents. But I felt nothing. The earth beneath was solid, layered with dry soil. A single crab crossed my view, its underside smeared with sand. It moved slowly, as if worn down, as if some mechanism within it had broken, yet it kept inching forward. Above me, the sky was framed by trees. I touched the sand and then tasted it on my fingertips; it didn’t taste like salt nor did it taste dry. At the stone’s base, near the bottom edge, I spotted something red. I lowered myself to the ground and leaned in for a closer look. Five round nodules, each about a centimeter across, clustered together like a string of grapes. Their surfaces were a touch bumpy, their texture firm, almost rubbery. Inside, there was liquid, part dark red and part pink. In color and shape, they resembled salmon roe. Slightly firm salmon roe. . . So, some creature’s eggs? I wondered if these belonged to the crab I had just seen. It must have wandered to the shoreline to lay them in the dunes or in a crevice in the rock. That was my conclusion. Tiny creatures like crabs and ants traverse great distances, facing all sorts of peril, driven by a relentless urge to lay eggs and propagate at any cost. That drive defines the brief span of their existence. They rarely pause to consider how senseless and painful that struggle can be. I looked around. The crab had vanished; there was no trace of a shell anywhere. With my fingernail, I pried the eggs from the stone. They popped off with a small click. They did not shatter in my fingers. The liquid inside gleamed as I tipped them, the red segments remaining distinct from the pink. Each bead seemed like a tiny universe. I tucked the eggs into my pocket and picked up the damp handkerchief I had been sitting on in the sand.
By the time I reached university, I had become better at talking to people. At a party I found myself chatting with a biology major with whom I barely exchanged words before. In the hush of background noise, I found myself recounting the crabs to him. It was the first time I’d ever shared the story with anyone. I described how the crabs had come to my school seeking the sea, how the shoreline had once been there but had vanished, and how I’d discovered a cluster of red crab eggs. He listened with a nod, but when I spoke of the eggs, he burst into laughter. He held a shochu sour in one hand. “No way. Those can’t be crab eggs,” he declared. “Huh?” “Crabs carry tens of thousands of eggs in a brood tucked under their bodies, and they hatch only when released into water. The eggs are transparent like plankton and hatch almost immediately. Crabs wouldn’t lay eggs that large, and they certainly wouldn’t deposit them on dry land. I’m no crustacean expert, but I’m certain those weren’t crab eggs.” And yet I was convinced of what I’d seen. They had to be something else. “They must’ve been eggs from some other creature. And you’re not sure they were even eggs. You described them as red, round, and springy? You probably found a toy.” They were eggs. No doubt about it. And they were not a plaything. I remembered how smooth they felt, how firm and undeniably alive they seemed. Which other living being would have laid its eggs in such a place—what other creature could bear that distant memory of a shoreline buried deep inside? “Female crabs.” “Huh?” “So you mean to say the crabs that appeared at your school were all female and were about to lay their eggs, driven by an innate biological imperative. Right?” “Yeah, that’s right.” I gave a small nod. “But logically, if that were the sole purpose, they would’ve vanished long ago. Think of the decades since the landfill began.” “ . . . Right.” I drained the last drops from my drink. Ice clacked against my lip. “And on top of that, you say there were dozens of crabs at school, but if you’re right, you would’ve noticed those eggs earlier, and in other places as well.” It was true. I’d searched for them, yet I’d only seen them that one time. “I really don’t understand it myself . . .” I could hear my voice grow fragile. I asked for a refill of the shochu sour. He gestured toward a waiter. “And what happened to those eggs in the end? You put them in your pocket, and then what . . . ?” “I threw them away into the river as well.” “You threw something else in?” “No, no. I simply let them drift toward the water.” “And then?” “I don’t know. They sank, floated up briefly, then settled on the bottom.” He looked down, stifling a laugh with his mouth. His broad, horse-like teeth flashed. “The library will probably have an encyclopedia of crustaceans. You could see if your crabs are listed there—though you won’t borrow it, perhaps you could search for your eggs.” He squeezed the lemon into his drink, sending a spray into the air. I wiped my fingers on my handkerchief. “I mean it,” he added. “Do it. High school girl discovers hitherto unknown crab species.” “I’m not in high school.” “But you were, once. I don’t know what you looked like in your uniform, Kana-chan.” “Me? Quite ordinary.” “Right.” A tense laugh escaped him, and beneath his drab shirt I caught the sharp scent of his sweat.
On my next trip home, I went to the river. I took the train to the station and walked along the familiar stretch. A yellow bulldozer sat diagonally across the embankment. Otherwise, the scene from the bridge remained the same: tall reeds swaying, the river filled with a brownish, tranquil current. A flock of sparrows had gathered in the reeds, making a noisy racket. They would perch on the reed tips, bend them downward, then instantly flutter back up, repeating this play as if the birds were keeping time with each other. One sparrow’s chirp was soft, but when the flock gathered, the sound became a jarring chorus. I watched from the bridge, my eyes dreamy, when suddenly, among the reed tips, something long and pointed broke the surface of the water—it was white, with a pronged, thick form. Alarmed, I fixed my gaze on it: a colossal crab claw, its pincers interlocked, the outer edges a sandy orange, strands of seaweed tangled in its rough surface. Any crab that large would be a monster: The claw itself was the size of a child. The sparrows scattered into the air in a panic. But one, perhaps too slow or confused, remained for a moment longer as the claw opened and snapped shut. Caught within the vast grip, the sparrow looked minuscule—its pale body nearly invisible against the pale yellow-brown of the pincers. From where I stood, I could hardly make out the sparrow, only its desperate flailing. The other sparrows had flown away. I could still hear their distant chatter. Were they watching from somewhere unseen? Or was it a different flock? Slowly, the giant claw, still clutching the prey, sank into the river, the tips of the pincers slipping beneath the surface with a soft plop. Ripples spread outward, collapsing as they merged with the steady flow. I looked up toward the estuary. In the distance, a massive crane—or some other great machine—loomed, impossibly tall, glittering in the air like a mirage. The land-reclamation work pressed on. Who knew where the original shoreline lay now? The sea would enter and retreat again, endlessly. I kept walking to the old school. The gate was locked with a padlock. A sign on the bars read: Authorized Personnel Only. The school grounds were utterly silent. The fence wore rust, weeds forced their way through the cracks in the pavement. The windows were dark—not merely because classes were on break. This was a place that had died, a place where life no longer existed. My pocket vibrated with a tiny tremor; it was my phone. The display showed the name of the student who had laughed at my crab-egg tale. I heard a soft scuttling sound and felt tiny, sharp legs climbing up my ankles.
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“Crabs” translated by Lucy North from Garden, copyright © 2018 by Hiroko Oyamada, translation copyright © 2026 by Lucy North. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
