“But, um, Konoha…When I was reading Tanizaki, it made me superhungry.”
The book girl’s stomach gurgled.
Thirty minutes later…
In the shade of the copse of trees behind the library, Tohko was joyously munching on a “meal” I had hastily written up in my assignment book.
“Yum! Yummy, Konoha! Two little boys who are best friends are going on an adventure during summer break, right? It’s like a piping-hot bagel sandwich piled high with teriyaki chicken and mashed potatoes. The bagel is so chewy and de-lic-ious!”
She tore off little bits from the assignment book and bit into them, chewing them up, kssh-kssh, and swallowing with a grin that filled her entire face.
“I’m sorry it wasn’t puffer fish sashimi.”
I was drinking hot milk tea in a can I’d bought from a vending machine in the library.
The day was clear, but still—hiding out in a place like this in January, the middle of winter, to eat covertly—I had no clue what we were thinking.
“Mmm, that was goooood. Thank yoooou. Sorry I was the only one who could eat lunch. Aren’t you hungry, too?”
And, of course, her face grew apologetic.
“No, I don’t want to eat anything.”
When I said that, Tohko looked a little sad. Then she immediately said in a ringing voice, “That’s no good. You have to eat, or you won’t be able to summon any energy when a crisis comes along. Right! In return for the bagel sandwich, your president is treating! C’mon, let’s go.”
She tugged on my arm with both hands and took me into a nearby fast-food place.
“Heh-heh. Order whateeeever you want.”
Not wanting to contradict Tohko, who had her flat-as-a-board chest thrown out, I ordered a fish fillet meal.
Tohko ordered a banana muffin and tea, too.
“Am I eating that, too?” I asked after we sat down near the window. She shook her head no and smiled slightly.
“Even if I eat it, it won’t taste like anything, but…sometimes I like going out like this and eating a meal with someone.”
Her words pierced my heart.
Tohko, who survived by eating stories written down on paper, wouldn’t taste anything even if she ate our food. So she would eat books in secret by herself for lunch.
From the outside, she looked extremely happy when she rapturously swallowed the torn-up paper.
“Yum,” Tohko murmured as she bit into the banana muffin.
“…You don’t know what it tastes like.”
“No. But…I can imagine it.”
She took another bite and smiled brightly.
“I bet this tastes like…Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter.”
I ate my fish fillet in silence.
Tohko ate her muffin with relish, too.
“…Hey, Konoha. About what you said in the library. I don’t think children’s literature is just for little kids.”
Hadn’t she been sucked into the world of Tanizaki? So she had heard me to some extent.
“There’s a different flavor to children’s literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.
“In particular, Miyazawa’s poems and children’s stories have a lot of parts that are hard to understand if you only read them once, and you can interpret them a lot of different ways. Maybe adults can actually enjoy it more.”
Hearing her say that things that were sweet as a child could feel bitter when you grew up, I had a sense that a cold hand was stroking the back of my neck.
Miu’s cold gaze came to mind once again.
After I revealed that I was Miu Inoue, Miu had looked at me with that same piercing gaze.
No—maybe before that…
Hadn’t there been a time when Miu had looked at me with poison in her eyes?
Yes, and long before that…
As soon as I thought about that, it became difficult to breathe again.
I got out the day planner that Tohko had been ripping up a little while ago and drew a picture of a broad-chested bird on it. The face was a cat, and I stuck either a beak or horns on its head and a long tongue lolling out. It was the picture that had been on that unsigned New Year’s card.
“Tohko, do you recognize this?”
When I put the day planner out on the table, Tohko peered at it closely.
“It was mixed in with the New Year’s cards that came to my house. There wasn’t a name on it, but I think maybe Miu sent it.”
“It might be one of Kenji Miyazawa’s doodles,” Tohko murmured, frowning. “A lot of the time, Miyazawa would doodle in the margins of his paper. He would draw waddling cats, rocks, trees...stuff like that. This looks like a picture he drew in a corner of the manuscript for ‘Song of the Defeated Youth.’”
“What kind of poem is that?”
“A poem telling about dawn witnessed at the shore. It’s based on the poem ‘Envy of Daybreak,’ which he wrote when he was traveling in the town of Sanriku, and it’s included in the second volume of Spring and Asura. He revised it a bunch of times, and from the colloquial ‘Envy of Daybreak,’ it became the literary ‘Song of the Defeated Youth.’ This poem is included in an unfinished manuscript of classical poetry.
“The title ‘Defeated Youth’ makes your heart skip momentarily, but it doesn’t talk about fierce despair or pain. Instead, it’s a quiet, beautiful poem. He’s watching the stars disappear from the sky as it brightens at dawn. You could even say it’s a poem about lost love.”
“Lost love…?”
Tohko murmured a bit from the beginning:
“Light touches the tremulous dawn
Taking the form of an immaculate sapphire
A wandering star I would fain compare with you
Melts into nothing now, what misery.”
Why had Kenji Miyazawa given this poem the title “Song of the Defeated Youth”?
Was it describing the dawn landscape that a defeated boy saw?
What had defeated him?
Love?
Or something totally different?
And was it only a coincidence that Miyazawa had drawn that picture of a monstrous bird in the corner of the manuscript?
And if the person who sent the picture was Miu, why had she done it?
“What…does this picture look like?” I asked.
“A bird maybe.”
“But isn’t the face a lot like a cat?”
“That’s true.”
“And its tongue is sticking out.”
“It…looks like that, true.”
I wonder what Miyazawa had been sticking his tongue out at.
Had the defeated boy been Miyazawa himself? And what did Miu feel had defeated her?
“You know, there’s a bird at the end of ‘Envy of Daybreak.’”
Tohko murmured again.
“…The snow-capped juniper and
a thousand headlands break into dawn
over the wide blue sea in a gale of leaves…
the stars tremble once more
like a tribe of birds devastated.”
Like a tribe of birds devastated?
I felt a chill in my heart as the line repeated again and again in my mind.
“In ‘Song of the Defeated Youth,’ the bird phrase itself has disappeared, but…interpreting Miyazawa’s works is really hard. The words are abstract, and there are lots of puzzles, and you can take them to signify just about anything. Though that’s part of the charm.”
Tohko smiled and drank her tea, which was completely cold by now, as if it was delicious.
I cleaned up my fish fillet burger, corn salad, and oolong tea, too.
“What’s next?”
“I’d like to try going to my middle school,” I muttered in a hard voice, and Tohko sucked in a small breath.
I didn’t attend my middle school graduation.
After Miu jumped, I kept having attacks where I suddenly could
n’t breathe and I was carried to the nurse’s office several times. Finally I stopped going to school and became a shut-in.
I never thought I would walk through this gate again.
The soccer and baseball teams were practicing in the spacious school yard.
My legs soon started shaking as I headed toward the school building, and each time I took a step, my chest tightened and my throat burned. My body stiffened with extreme tension.
“Konoha, are you all right?” Tohko asked me in a worried voice. I had lost any ability to answer her. The instant I lifted my face to wipe off the sweat pouring from my brow, I spotted the flag waving on top of the school building, and it made me think of the skirt of Miu’s uniform.
In that moment, I was assaulted by an intense pain inside my head. It seemed to crack my skull and crush my brain. A white light inside my head dazed me, and I crumpled to the ground in front of the entrance.
“Konoha!”
“…Nngh.”
When I tried to stand, my legs were as heavy as lead and wouldn’t move. The scene I’d witnessed that day on the roof ran through my mind like bolts of lighting.
An unnerving sky overhead like the cover of Miu Inoue’s book. Myself standing frozen on the roof.
The gusting wind, the sickly sweet aroma of greenery. Her fluttering skirt, her fluttering ponytail. Miu’s gaze wavering like the surface of a lake. Miu standing outside the railing.
“Don’t! No, that’s dangerous. Come back, Miu!”
I wanted to run to her, but my feet wouldn’t move a single step forward. My throat simply hurt so much it felt like it would rip apart, and I couldn’t speak!
Miu smiled sadly.
And those words—!
“You would never understand, Konoha.”
Still staring at me, Miu wheeled forward.
And just like that she fell back headfirst, like a bird that’s lost its wings.
“Miu! Miu! Miu!”
“Konoha!!”
Tohko’s voice was fading into the distance.
The world broke apart, and as my heart was torn open and my blood flowed, Miu’s last words were like a broken CD, playing again and again inside my head.
You probably wouldn’t understand.
“You would never understand, Konoha.”
* * *
Oh, how woeful. It’s so woeful.
You loved that little white bird so much. You gave it clean water and good food every day and gave it kisses. You were so fond of it.
How woeful. The bird’s neck started bleeding, and it stopped moving.
And the goldfish turned upside down and bobbed in the water, remember?
We dug a hole under a cherry tree and tried to line the goldfish up, but the hole was too small, so we couldn’t fit them all. And despite your sobs, we layered more goldfish on top of the others, remember?
Your hands got filthy with dirt, and there was even mud under your fingernails. You were rubbing at the tears rolling down your cheeks with those dirty hands, so your cheeks got covered in mud, too, and you scratched yourself.
Oh, how woeful.
But I couldn’t do it because you weren’t really looking.
Did you know that in a way you killed the bird and the goldfish?
Everything you hold dear will go away.
So woeful.
So very, very woeful.
I wonder what you’ll lose next.
Note:
Shut your mouth, B! I’m not looking for your opinion!
Don’t give me orders! Get out!
* * *
When my eyes opened, I saw a wooden ceiling.
Where am I?
I didn’t recognize the sliding door, the bamboo mat flooring, the pale violet curtains, the huge stacks of books lined up on the shelf.
A rug was laid out in the center of the floor, and bedding was spread out on top of it. I had been put to bed there.
Someone was gently squeezing my hand.
Looking up to find the owner of the other hand, I saw Tohko’s face. She was still in her uniform, looking down at me worriedly, and when our eyes met, she smiled softly.
“Thank goodness. You’re awake.”
“Did I lose consciousness?”
My throat was dried out, rasping, and my voice was terribly hoarse.
Tohko’s fingers gently brushed my right hand, which was sticking out from under the covers.
“Yes, you did. The boys on the soccer team carried you to a taxi for me. I used your cell phone to call your house, but I guess everyone was out because no one answered. So I brought you to my room.”
Oh…so this was where Tohko was staying.
The room was surprisingly neat, and there were no books piled up every which way like in the clubroom. Even the books on the shelf were neatly lined up.
“I’ll bring you something to drink.”
Tohko released her interlocked fingers from mine, then slid open the door and went out of the room.
Fog clung to my brain, and my thoughts wouldn’t coalesce. My throat was intensely dry.
I gazed blankly at the books lined up on her shelves, at the Ogai, the Sōseki, the Heinlein, the Andersen, the poetry by Byron, the foreign picture books, and everything else. The genres were all over the place, but I could tell from the faded covers that all the books were old and had been taken up to read many times.
Just then the door opened, and Ryuto came in, dressed untidily in a T-shirt.
“Guess you’re awake now, huh?” he said chummily, and he plopped down and crossed his legs next to the bedding where I lay.
“When Tohko brought you here and y’were all limp and covered in sweat, it surprised me. I wondered what she’d gone and done this time.”
“Sorry to just barge in like this.”
I sat up, and my cheeks grew hot. Ryuto laughed maturely.
“Don’t even worry about it. You’ve been having a tough time, right? I heard Kotobuki’s in the hospital.”
I wondered how much he’d heard from Tohko. His tone was offhanded, but he looked at me with a tough gaze that seemed to be peeking into my soul, and my stomach squeezed tight.
“I know someone at that hospital actually. And wouldn’t y’know, I heard Kotobuki fell down the stairs at the hospital. She can’t catch a break, huh?”
“She fell?!”
I had cried out without thinking, and as if to play up how very surprised he was, Ryuto said, “Huh? Ya didn’t know? Didn’t Kotobuki tell ya?”
“…I didn’t hear that she’d fallen down the stairs, no.”
How could she have fallen down stairs at the hospital? Had something happened with Miu maybe? But Miu wouldn’t have…
I hurriedly quashed the scene that flashed through my mind, sending an intense pain through my heart.
How could I think something so ridiculous? Miu would never push Kotobuki or anything else!
But…if the two of them had wrestled with each other, and her foot slipped…
Sweat (which had once dried) now gradually broke out across my forehead and the back of my neck.
Still looking straight into my face, Ryuto spoke with a bright voice.
“Wow, so Kotobuki hides things from her boyfriend. Well, lots of girls are like that. They’ll go tell their problems to some other guy instead of their boyfriend or whatever. And hook up with him in the meantime. Oh, but right—you had a date with Tohko today, and you kept that secret from Kotobuki.”
His words pierced my heart.
When I got stuck for a response, Ryuto broke into a grin out of nowhere.
“Oh, man. Don’t look so serious. I’m jokin’. I’m sorry. I went too far.”
He ducked his head, still laughing, then brought his face close to mine with a look on his face like a mischievous child.
“Actually, I’ve got this girl right now who’s perfect for me. I’m seriously into her. And I’m workin’ on her. But it’s like she’s got her guard up, and she won’t open up to me.
How can I win her over, y’think?”
I answered in a gloomy voice, “I don’t know much about that kind of thing.”
“Hmph. I figured you would know.”
“Huh?”
He instantly turned the question back around on me, but just then, Tohko came back carrying a glass on a tray.
“Hey, Ryuto! Are you talking about girls again? Konoha’s tired. Don’t make him a party to your philandering!”
She bopped Ryuto on the head with one hand.
“Ow! You got it all wrong, Tohko. I was just askin’ Konoha for romantic advice.”
“In that case, I, the book girl who’s thoroughly versed in the romances of all the world, ancient and modern, will hear you out later.”
“Uh, well—I just remembered I’ve gotta run an errand!” Ryuto stood up hastily. “Take it easy, Konoha.”
He waved cheerfully and then left.
“Geez. All he does is run around at night on the town.”
After fuming, Tohko started smiling.
“Here you go, Konoha.”
She handed me the glass.
“Thanks a lot.”
I accepted the cool glass in both hands. It held juice, a mixture of grated apples and honey, and finely crushed ice. It was like the elixir of life. It drenched my parched throat.
When I finished drinking, my body and emotions had both calmed considerably.
“Thank you. That was great.”
“I’m glad.” Tohko smiled gently.
“What time is it?”
“It just turned six.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“You sure? You won’t get sick again on the way?”
Her face fell slightly, and she looked down at me worriedly.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Okay…”
I couldn’t impose any more than I already had in the home of a student studying for her exams. When I got out from under the blankets, Tohko brought over my coat, which she’d put on a hanger.
Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation Page 8
