“Well, you got to read to the end of it, didn’t you, Akari?” I said as we walked home. Akari nodded, clutching the last pages of the story to her chest. I wanted to cry all over again. She looked so happy. Of course—the story had been written for her. For the first time, I thought it might be appropriate to thank Ms. Minakami. But Akari might still vanish because of her! I vowed never to let another word of thanks to her pass my lips.
“Do you want to go watch the fireworks tomorrow?” Yūsuke asked. It was late summer now, and there would be a fireworks display at the Naka River for Obon.
“Sounds good,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me, too!” Akari answered.
The three of us went our separate ways.
The next evening, Akari failed to appear at our meeting spot. When he saw me, Yūsuke yelled, “You’re late! Let’s go!” and started to set off.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Akari?”
Yūsuke gave me a funny look. “Akari? Who are you talking about?”
“From our class! She lives behind me! Yesterday she promised to meet us.”
“Kazu, the heat’s gone to your head. Akari moved, remember?”
“She moved?” I said.
“Before summer vacation. She moved to Canada.”
“What?!”
“Don’t you remember? Some classmate you are!”
There was no point questioning him further.
“Uh, sorry. I can’t go to the fireworks after all,” I said. I sprinted to Akari’s house.
The house was still there. Just like when I saw it the first time. It had no curtains. It stood vacant. A FOR RENT sign hung on the gate.
I zoomed to Minami Heights.
Ms. Minakami was gone. The super spotted me. “Ms. Minakami has moved away, young man,” he said.
“What?!” I said for the second time that day. I couldn’t believe my ears. Or my eyes.
“I was just here yesterday!” I told him. “She wasn’t preparing to move at all!”
“Probably not,” he replied. “She couldn’t take much with her where she was going.”
He told me she had moved to an assisted-living complex. “She took her valuables,” he explained. “She asked us to sell the rest of her things.”
I almost sank to the floor in a heap.
Where had Akari gone? Yūsuke said she’d left before summer. So maybe she hadn’t vanished completely. I wanted to go see Ms. Minakami, but the super said she lived far away now. He knew the name of her town, but not her address.
With Akari and Ms. Minakami both gone, I spent the rest of the evening in a daze.
“Kazu, what’s the matter with you? Do you have a crush on someone?” my sister asked, peering at my face. This was the third time she’d asked that tonight.
Around the time we heard the fireworks booming at the river, the phone rang.
“My goodness, hello! How is your new place? How is your mother?”
I figured the call was for Mom, but she yelled, “Kazu! For you! It’s Akari!”
I seized the phone. “Akari! Is that really you? Are you OK?”
“I am, Kazu, I’m fine! I didn’t disappear!” she replied. Her voice sounded distant.
“Are you really in Canada?” I asked.
“Yes. It was such a shock, Kazu! I woke up this morning, and here I was! And guess what? My mom is here, too, and all of our things. Everything we put together in Masuda—our furniture and dishes, even my swimsuit and yukata.”
When Akari had come back to life, her house had been completely empty. But now her place was full of her possessions from Japan. That felt like proof somehow that she had lived here for a month in the summer, right when she first returned.
“Will you be all right over there, by yourself?” I asked.
I worried for her. To Akari, her own mother was still see-through.
“Yes, I’ll be all right,” she said. “I’m beginning to get used to this. And you helped me, Kazu, so I know I’ll make it. I’m going to live! I know I can do it.”
I said nothing. It felt like my words had all lodged in my chest.
“It looks like I’ll live far away from Kimyō Temple Alley now, and start a new life totally separate from my old one,” Akari went on. “I’ll live in a place where no one knows I came back to life. In Masuda, I was practicing and getting ready for this. The vacation helped me prepare. Now, my new life can really begin!”
Akari sure was tough.
“Well, that’s great,” I said. “Now you can go to middle school and high school and university and fall in love and have a family.”
“Right! And that family will not be invisible,” she said. “I’m so excited, Kazu!”
I could imagine her clasping her hands to her chest and hopping, like always.
“But I won’t forget, Kazu,” she said. “I won’t forget you, and so you can’t forget me. Ever. I have ‘The Moon Is on the Left’ right here with me.”
“I won’t forget, don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll remember you, and I’ll remember the story.”
“Good. That’s a promise!”
The phone call ended. I stood there holding the receiver, dazed yet again.
Ms. Minakami had not burned the statuette. She had made me think she had, but she had kept it safe. Maybe she had been uncertain what to do. If the statuette were lost, it would affect not only the returned spirits but also their families and offspring. She had said that to me, right?
If she’d been so uncertain, she could have told me! Then I would never have had to hate her or worry about Akari vanishing. I couldn’t believe that stubborn granny. Oh, well. The important thing was, Akari would live.
Akari was going to live!
Summer vacation ended. The stifling heat began to seem like a dream as cool breezes blew. I thought of Akari and wondered how she was.
I couldn’t forget her or Kimyō Temple, or “The Moon Is on the Left.” I could never forget because … Kiriko came to live with us. Kiriko with her big wide face, acting like our place had always been hers.
“Kazu! Kazu!” my mom shouted. “Come in here, will you? Kiri-chan killed a mouse!”
I’d been demoted from eldest son to catsitter. Kiriko saw this as a promotion for me, no doubt. Naturally our old house harbored mice. She enjoyed recreational hunting like royalty.
The night of the fireworks show, the super from Minami Heights had run to our place with a pale face. He carried Kiriko together with her special cushion, her food, and even her kitty litter. He had just realized she was still in Minami Heights. A note had been left with her.
The note said that Kiriko had been promised to me, so would I please take care of her.
I moaned aloud. Seriously? Ms. Minakami had said there was a favor she wanted instead of a shoulder massage—but I hadn’t expected this!
Mom wore a sour face about it, but Dad helped by saying that one cat would hardly be noticed in our large house. My sister bonded with Kiriko instantly. Those two were just alike: they both drove me nuts.
Soon after school started, Ms. Minakami sent me a letter.
Kazu-kun,
You must be mad because I left without saying anything. Or maybe you’re glad to be rid of me?
At any rate, I couldn’t burn the statuette. I made you think I did, but from the day I stole it I never could figure out what to do with it. I still don’t think there should be a Kimyō Temple. The whole idea may just be myth. But if there really were people who returned to life, some of them might have had families. There could be scores of Polonia, in other words. I didn’t know what would happen to those people—so I chose not to burn it.
I never took Kimyō Temple seriously before this summer. I thought it was legend. But Kazu-kun, you believed. You were desperate. You were frantically trying to save someone all by yourself, and you were quite a brave young man. Seeing your determination, I thought you were right, and I changed.
When you and Akari-chan came to my a
partment, I saw that she might be a ghost. You said only that she was a classmate, without telling me where she lived. You didn’t want me to know she was your neighbor, did you? You looked so guilty after that! You might as well have come out and told me she was a child of Kimyō Temple! Plus Daisy is such an old magazine! I could hardly help thinking it had something to do with a returned ghost. And Daisy is a magazine for girls.
So, Akari is a returned spirit, is she? Kazu-kun, you brought her to me because you thought I had burned the statuette, but what you did was dangerous. I might have blurted out “Child of Kimyō Temple” right then and there!
Then again, I never could have. You, Kazu, were working so hard to protect Akari. And she was lovely. For the first time I believed that the myth might be more than just a story. It made me glad that I had not burned the statuette in the first place. I’m not some horrible demon, you know.
Anyway, I decided that, like you and your family, there was nothing for me to do but keep silent about the spirits who have returned and protect them. It made me angry because it felt like I’d lost to you. But now I think that was a good thing.
Thank you for making me finish “The Moon Is on the Left.” I had given up on that dream and buried my disappointment for years, but finishing that project made the hopes of my youth come flooding back. When I completed the tale, I felt that perhaps I could die now with no regrets. But not so fast. I have no intention of dying soon, as you well know. And I do not wish to have further regrets. I’m stubborn that way.
I left the statuette with someone trustworthy. I don’t know if more spirits will return. You must think it would be fine if they did. Kiriko likes that about you. So do I.
Respectfully yours,
Sato Minakami
P.S. Finishing “The Moon Is on the Left” was such fun, I plan to write another tale. I’m going to enter it in a Debut Novelist contest. Be sure to celebrate when my first book comes out!
Oh, boy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SACHIKO KASHIWABA is a prolific writer of children’s and young adult fantasy whose career spans more than four decades. Her works have garnered the prestigious Sankei, Shogakukan, and Noma children’s literature awards, and her novel The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist influenced Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away. Her books for children include the Monster Hotel series, Ōobasan no fushigi na reshipi (Great-aunt’s amazing recipes), Mirakuru famirī (Miracle family), Tsuzuki no toshokan (The what’s-next library), Temple Alley Summer, Ōsama ni koi shita majo (The witch who loved the king), and Chikashitsu kara no fushigi na tabi (Strange journey from the basement), lately animated as The Wonderland. She has co-translated two fairy novels by Gail Carson Levine into Japanese, and she edited a children’s version of the Tōno monogatari, beloved folk legends collected by Kizen Sasaki and Kunio Yanagita. She lives in Iwate Prefecture, Japan.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
MIHO SATAKE is a Japanese artist and illustrator. She is best known for illustrating the Japanese editions of several classic children’s books including Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, three books in the Kiki’s Delivery Service series by Eiko Kadono, and the twentieth-anniversary edition of the Harry Potter series.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
AVERY FISCHER UDAGAWA grew up in Kansas and studied English and Asian studies at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. She holds an MA in advanced Japanese studies from the University of Sheffield. She has studied at Nanzan University, Nagoya, on a Fulbright fellowship, and at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, Yokohama. She writes, translates, and works in international education near Bangkok, where she lives with her bicultural family.
YONDER is an imprint from Restless Books devoted to bringing the wealth of great stories from around the globe to English-reading children, middle graders, and young adults. Books from other countries, cultures, viewpoints, and storytelling traditions can open up a universe of possibility, and the wider our view, the more powerfully books enrich and expand us. In an increasingly complex, globalized world, stories are potent vehicles of empathy. We believe it is essential to teach our kids to place themselves in the shoes of others beyond their communities, and instill in them a lifelong curiosity about the world and their place in it. Through publishing a diverse array of transporting stories, Yonder nurtures the next generation of savvy global citizens and lifelong readers.
Visit us at restlessbooks.org/yonder
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