“I moved to a new place a few weeks ago.”
“No wonder,” she murmured and blew hot air into her hands.
I stood up. “Let’s go back, or we’ll miss the last train.”
Seven Stars followed, and we walked side by side. The wind was getting stronger. Her hair kept blowing into her face, and she had to tuck it behind her ears. Her hands must have been frozen. I felt like grabbing those hands to warm them up.
What are you thinking? I told myself. She’s just a kid.
“Mr. Ishida,” Seven Stars said, kicking a piece of gravel. “What did your first love look like?”
I looked at her. “Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason, I’m just curious.”
“People don’t normally ask about those kinds of things.”
She tilted her head. “Why can’t you just answer me?”
“If you insist . . .” I sighed, trying to recall the characteristics of the first girl I’d fallen in love with. She was unremarkable. “She was a quiet girl, nothing special.”
“Your classmate?”
“No, but we went to the same school. She used to sit on the staircase leading to the green field I told you about, watching me and my friends play soccer.”
“What did she do there? Toss errant balls back to the field?”
“Sometimes.” I rubbed my nose. “Kind of cliché, isn’t it?”
“So you asked her out? And let me guess, she turned you down.”
I sighed. The nerve of her. “I never asked her out. But you aren’t wrong, either. She would’ve turned me down if I’d ever asked.”
“Why would you say that?”
“She preferred the goalkeeper to the team’s ace.”
“Hang on, hang on. The team’s ace . . .” Seven Stars feigned a surprised look. “That can’t be you, can it?”
“You . . .”
My words trailed off, and we both laughed. I was surprised that she’d gotten me to talk about my personal life.
Actually, it was Jin who had gone out with that girl. She was his first date, and she was the one who had asked him out. He wasn’t as serious about her as she was about him. Not that I bore a grudge against Jin. I never asked the girl out, not even after they broke up. Maybe I hadn’t actually liked her that much.
Jin was the first one in our grade to have a girlfriend. The rest of the boys looked up to him. From time to time, they came during recess to ask for relationship advice. Apparently, he was good at it. He had helped a few of our classmates get girlfriends.
At the time, I was more interested in soccer than the opposite sex. I did like that girl, but I’d never thought of dating her. I wasn’t at the stage where I wanted a romantic relationship.
Once, though, I did ask Jin, “Do you love your girlfriend?”
He nodded. “More or less.”
“Do you even know what love is?”
I had no idea why I was being so patronizing. Perhaps I couldn’t believe true love existed at our age. Our classmates who claimed to be in love were mistaking excitement and fuzzy feelings for love.
“It’s simple once you know the basics,” Jin said. He opened his notebook and drew a Venn diagram of two overlapping circles. He wrote L, L, L inside the three sections. Pointing at his drawing, he explained, “‘Like,’ over here, is when you want to spend time with that person. ‘Lust,’ on the other side here, is when you want to sleep with that person. Or, ‘I want to touch her boobs,’—that’s lust.” Finally, he pointed to the L in the overlapping area. “This section in the middle is what we call love. It’s an intersection between ‘like’ and ‘lust.’ Do you get it now?”
“I think so.”
We stopped our discussion there, but his words rang in my mind long afterward. I found myself curious about girls’ breasts. How would it feel to touch them?
So when a girl asked me out, I said yes. She happened to have well-developed breasts. Unfortunately, after touching them, my initial enthusiasm was gone.
“Mr. Ishida, it creeps me out when you stop talking so suddenly,” Seven Stars said.
“What do you want me to say, then?” I said. “Do you have any other questions?”
“You’re not going to ask about my first love?”
“You’ll tell me if you want me to know.”
“True.”
But Seven Stars didn’t say another word. She remained silent on our entire walk to the train station, even when I bid her farewell at the platform.
I was taking a different train from her, and mine came first. As I boarded the carriage, she continued to look at me. Once the doors were shut, her mouth moved. She was saying something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then the train departed and she blended into the sea of people.
When I got to my station, the last bus running to my apartment had already gone. I’d known it was late, but hadn’t realized we’d been out so long. I pulled up the collar of my parka to protect my neck from the cold wind and left the train station. The scent of rain was still thick in the air.
It took almost an hour to walk to my apartment. Half running, I climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. When I reached my unit, I found an envelope in front of the door.
22
Searching
for
the
Kobayashi
Women’s
Clinic
I picked up the thick brown document envelope. My name and address were written on it in black marker, but the sender’s name was missing, and there was no stamp. The sender must have had it delivered in person.
But I hadn’t given anyone my new address. The only people who knew it were Honda and Mrs. Itano. It wouldn’t be Honda since I’d seen him earlier, so the letter must have come from Mrs. Itano or Izumi. Perhaps there were some remaining tenant documents for me to sign.
I unlocked the door and went inside. Sitting on the floor, I tore open the envelope and pulled out a stack of letter-sized papers. They were photocopies of medical records from the Kobayashi Women’s Clinic. I’d never heard of the place. I looked at the patient’s name and my breath caught.
Keiko Ishida.
I studied the charts carefully. The harder I tried to interpret them, the more jumbled they became. Soon, the lists broke down into words, and the words lost their essence. I read them, but couldn’t grasp their meaning. My consciousness faded and my soul seeped from my body.
Soon, I found myself standing in front of another me, the physical me, who had lost his spirit. The man sitting on the floor holding the photocopies had empty eyes. The shell of me was disturbed by the content of the medical documents, yet he remained in a daze. He read the photocopies again and again, without even a hint of expression.
I shook him. “You need to show these to the police.”
He stared at me.
“Call the police and tell them you’ve found a clue!” I shouted.
He averted his eyes and kept quiet. Folding his knees, he buried his face between them. Crouching like this, he looked much smaller. No, he didn’t just look smaller. He actually shrank into an eight-year-old boy.
The boy looked up. His eyes told me he was about to cry. I sat next to him and patted his shoulder, trying to console him.
“I understand you’re in shock, but tomorrow you’ll feel better,” I said. “Trust me, you’ll be fine.”
For a moment, I was taken aback, realizing those words were what my sister would’ve said.
The little boy started to sob, and I continued to pat his shoulder. He cried silently until he fell asleep, exhausted. And then I dozed off, too.
When I woke up, I found myself lying on the floor. What a weird dream.
I’d been curled up in an awkward position, and now my whole body felt stiff. Stretching, I yawned and looked at my watch.
Three o’clock in the morning. I took the watch off and changed from my work clothes into a sweatshirt and drawstring pants. I returned to the living room to turn off the light, but I stopped myself before flicking the switch.
What was that? A thick brown envelope peeked out from beneath the low table. I bent down to retrieve it. It was already torn open. I didn’t need to remove the contents to know what was inside.
Then it wasn’t a dream, after all. My sister really had been pregnant five years ago.
I took an urgent leave of absence the next day to find the Kobayashi Women’s Clinic.
I knew I could have handed the documents to the police. They would definitely do a better job investigating the lead than I could, but my sister wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find out about what had happened, and I felt obligated to respect her decision.
According to the address on the letterhead, the clinic was located in a suburb of Kuromachi. It was an hour train ride from Akakawa, followed by another bus ride.
When I arrived at Kuromachi central train station, the place was half asleep. There were only seven commuters, including me. Once I stepped down from the train, time seemed to slow. The people walked without hurrying, the ticket collector took his time, and the man standing next to me breathed heavily.
I went to the information center and showed the man behind the counter the address I was looking for. He directed me to the bus stop outside the station.
“Which bus should I take?” I asked.
“Any bus is fine,” he answered. “There’s only one bus service.”
I waited twenty minutes before the bus arrived. It was almost empty. The only other riders were an elderly couple and a housewife with groceries. I showed the clinic’s address to the bus driver. He nodded and I took a seat in the second row.
The journey was strenuous, the path taking the bus along curvy roads. The stops were far apart and the bus didn’t stop often since no one was waiting to board. I kept eating mints to fight my motion sickness.
About half an hour later, the bus driver shouted, “Young man, it’s your stop.”
“Thank you.” I got off quickly.
A dizzy spell struck me. It was midday, and the sun was at its peak. I should have brought a cap, but I hadn’t expected it to be scorching hot in September. Not knowing which way to go, I crossed to the other side of the street, where there was a row of shops.
An old man was selling canned drinks in front of a sundries store. They were chilled inside a Styrofoam box filled with ice cubes. I bought a can of Pocari Sweat and asked for directions.
“You got off at the wrong stop,” he said. “You can either walk or wait for the next bus, but it won’t come so fast.”
I decided to walk. Big mistake—the next stop turned out to be over a mile away. By the time I reached it, my T-shirt was drenched in sweat. Now in a residential area, I looked around for a road sign. At least I’d found the right street. The clinic should be somewhere nearby. I finished my drink and resumed my search.
The address was a cordoned-off construction site. I explored the location to confirm it. I wasn’t mistaken. The clinic should have been there. I peered through the half-open gate, but no one was there.
I wandered around the neighborhood, looking for someone I could speak with. Finally, I saw an elderly lady sweeping her porch. I watched her for a while before approaching the house. She was hunched over. Twice, she stopped to hit her back. The sound of her hemp broom brushing against the tiles reminded me of home.
“Good morning,” I greeted her. “I’m looking for the Kobayashi Women’s Clinic. Do you know where it is?”
She looked at me with narrowed eyes.
“I’m looking for the Kobayashi Women’s Clinic,” I repeated, slower and louder this time.
“The clinic . . .” She nodded. “No more . . . no more . . . gone . . .” She pointed in the direction of the construction site. “No more.”
“Have they moved elsewhere?”
She looked down and continued sweeping, as if I were no longer there. Shortly after, a girl in a middle-school uniform came out of the house. She wore a stack of colorful plastic bangles on her wrist and had a lollipop in her hand.
“My grandma’s hearing isn’t good,” the girl said. “But like she said, the clinic moved away.”
“When was that?”
“Two, three years ago, maybe? The developer was planning to build a shopping complex, but there was some trouble with funding, so the project is suspended.”
“Do you know where the clinic moved to?”
“No idea.” She licked her candy.
I thanked her for the information and left. The elderly lady was still sweeping when the young girl went back into the house.
On the corner of the block, I saw a convenience store. I went in to buy a bottle of water and used the opportunity to ask about the clinic, but the shop attendant told me he had just moved to the town a few days ago.
“I’ve heard the construction site has been abandoned for a while now,” he said.
I went around the area and asked a few more people. A housewife on her way home from the supermarket, a group of children playing hide-and-seek, and a postman walking a bicycle with a flat tire. None of them knew what had happened to the clinic—it was as if the institution had vanished into thin air one day.
Completely spent, I took the bus back to the train station. I tried to sleep on the train ride to Akakawa, but I couldn’t. The brown envelope inside my bag made me uneasy. I had too many unanswered questions.
23
Autumn
Moon
and
Half
Moon
I needed sleep badly that night, but my mind wouldn’t shut down. I found myself tossing around on the bed after midnight, eyes wide open. It was a long, bizarre night; the darkness seemed oppressive.
Moonlight found its way through the gaps of the thick brocade curtains. It spread across the white ceiling and illuminated a patch where the paint had peeled. How long would it take for that paint to fall? A month, a year, a decade?
On nights like these, time stretched and my senses became heightened. The sound of the occasional vehicle passing in the distance became piercingly clear. If I concentrated, I could even pick out the ticking of my alarm clock’s second hand. Though I’d left Kuromachi, everything was still moving slowly. Hopefully tomorrow, time would go back to normal.
I got up and went to the kitchen to grab a beer. Just my luck—I’d run out when I really needed a drink.
If I cut across the park, the nearest 24-hour convenience store was two kilometers away. The night wasn’t windy, but it was cold. I quickened my pace to try to keep warm.
The bright lights and colorful advertisements on the store’s glass panels provided a stark contrast to the dimly lit park. I pushed the door open and the bell tinkled. Even though I’d come at an odd hour, another customer was inside. It was my mysterious neighbor, the zori man. I should have expected to bump into him one of these days.
His black hoodie covered his unruly hair. Underneath, I caught a glimpse of gray sweater. And of course, he had on his signature zori. His toes must have been freezing.
I picked up a pack of Asahi Super Dry and took it to the cashier. The zori man stood directly in front of me. He loaded his items from the basket onto the counter one by one—instant noodles in various flavors and a pack of canned Diet Coke. After paying, he walked off without glancing in my direction. Was he too preoccupied with his own thoughts? Didn’t he recognize me at all? I purchased my beer and left.
Naturally, we walked in the same direction. His pace was slower than mine, probably because he was wearing those zori. The sandals made loud scraping sounds against the asphalt with every step he took.
Soon, I caught up with him. He stopped and turned to me.
“I’m your neighbor,” I said, thinking it was better to identify myself in case he mistook me for someone suspicious. “We live on the same floor.”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” he replied in an unfamiliar accent. “Would you mind repeating yourself?”
“I’m your neighbor.”
He nodded. “I’ve seen you before.”
“I should have introduced myself when I moved in.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He turned around and we walked back alongside each other.
“I’ve noticed that you only come out at night,” I said.
The zori man maintained a long silence, as if he hadn’t heard me. Feeling awkward, I pretended I hadn’t said anything. The scraping sounds marked the quiet night.
Suddenly, he turned to me and said, “If you’re saying something and I’m not responding, it’s not because I’m ignoring you. I’m actually deaf. But don’t worry, I can read your lips, though it’s a bit hard now since it’s dark out.”
“I said I’ve only seen you come out at night,” I repeated slowly.
“Yes, I try not to go out during the day. Too many people talking at the same time, it’s confusing.”
I nodded and didn’t follow up. It would be hard for him to read my lips while we were walking. Exiting the park, we climbed the five flights before reaching our common corridor.
“Good night,” he said.
I bowed. “Good night.”
Entering my apartment, I went to the kitchen. I tore open the box of beer and put all the cans except one inside the refrigerator. I put that single can in the freezer before going to the bathroom. By the time I returned, it was already chilled. I pulled up the ring and took a big gulp. Not as cold as I’d have liked it to be, but I could live with that. I went out to the corridor with my beer to enjoy the quiet of the night.
I wasn’t the only one with the idea. The zori man was already standing in the corridor, leaning against the railing. He was looking at the park, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. His thick clothing was gone, and now a loose white T-shirt hung on his skinny frame. Just looking at him made me feel cold.
Rainbirds Page 17
