Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation

by Mizuki Nomura

  Contrary to the coolness of her eyes, her voice had a pretentious tone that was almost gently informing me of the fact—and was also almost impossible to contradict.

  My heart stiffened, was bound, at her voice and the strength of her gaze looking down at me, and I brought my face closer to her small foot, just as Miu wished.

  It was wrong to do this!

  But I couldn’t possibly refuse Miu’s command.

  Besides, just like Miu said, I had always followed her around like an obedient dog.

  Because ever since we were children, Miu’s word was absolute.

  Just as my trembling lips were about to brush the tips of her white nails, the door to the room swung open.

  “Stop!”

  Tightly gripping a cane that was fixed to her arm with a ring, wearing a cardigan over her pajamas, Kotobuki appeared, her face flushed.

  She advanced, verging on tears and slamming her cane on the floor, bang, bang!

  “Don’t do that, Inoue! Don’t listen to what a girl like her says! No—no!”

  I felt as if the blood in my body was rising in a torrent to my head.

  The embarrassment and despair of being seen by Kotobuki in that pathetic position, kneeling on the floor—it made the world grow bleak, and I wished I could disappear.

  Kotobuki glared at Miu with eyes like fire and screamed, “You…you make me sick!! How could you call Inoue a dog?! How could you call me here deliberately and make Inoue do that?! Inoue—Inoue isn’t your dog!”

  Miu’s eyes instantly teared up.

  “What are you talking about? Obviously I didn’t call you here. Don’t go around mouthing off. You were just eavesdropping and barged in here. And then to tell a lie like that in front of Konoha, trying to make me the bad guy—how awful of you.”

  “You’re the one who’s lying! You sent me a text message!”

  “That’s a lie! A lie!”

  “—Then what’s this?”

  After a look of hesitation, Kotobuki grabbed her cell phone from the pocket of her cardigan, opened it, and shoved it at Miu.

  Her long nails glinting, Miu took the phone, then opened the window and hurled it outside.

  Kotobuki’s eyes widened.

  I stood up, too. The nails I had clipped off spilled from my lap.

  “Wh-what are you doing?!”

  Kotobuki grabbed Miu, her face bright red.

  Still sitting in bed, Miu shoved Kotobuki away with both hands. When Kotobuki lost her balance and fell onto her butt, Miu clung to me and wailed.

  “You’re terrible, forging stuff on your cell phone! Listen, Konoha. Kotobuki came here yesterday, too, and said she would take you from me. That she was the one who liked you and that I was in her way.”

  “Th-that’s a lie! I never said that,” Kotobuki swore, shaking her head as she crouched on the floor.

  Miu clung to me even tighter and shouted, “She said she wished I would jump again and die! That you would be happier that way!”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Konoha, you believe me, don’t you? Or would it really be better if I died because I’m in the way like Kotobuki said? If you tell me to die, Konoha, I’ll jump out this window right now.”

  Her face smeared with tears, Miu broke away from me and laid a hand on the window frame.

  The image of Miu smiling, her ponytail and the hem of her skirt rippling in the wind, ran through my brain like a bolt of lightning, and fear pierced my spine.

  “No! Miu!”

  I grabbed Miu from behind.

  “Let me go! If you don’t believe me, I’d rather die!”

  “I believe you! I believe you, so stop doing this!” I yelled as I yanked Miu blindly from the window, as if possessed. “Kotobuki, just leave! I’m sorry!”

  I didn’t think Kotobuki had said anything bad to Miu. She wasn’t like that. She came off harsh, but I knew it was just awkwardness and that she was really a kind girl.

  But I didn’t want to watch as Miu jumped to her death again.

  That was the one thing I couldn’t handle.

  The torment, the despair, the fear that had pierced me that day on the roof would reawaken inside me. The world would break apart, and my heart would shatter into pieces.

  “Please! Go! Just leave, Kotobuki. Miu wouldn’t lie to me. I believe her!”

  Intense shock showed on Kotobuki’s face.

  Her eyes were so wide I was sure they couldn’t possibly widen any more. She stared at me blankly, her face ashen.

  Finally her face crumbled, her eyes quietly filled with tears, and transparent beads dripped down her cheeks. Feeling like my chest and throat were about to rip apart, I watched the bandage covering the right side of her face grow soggy with tears. That was the punishment I was dealt.

  In a hoarse voice, Kotobuki whispered, “I thought…I’d finally…gotten a little bit…closer to you. But I guess I was wrong.”

  I couldn’t answer.

  All I could do was let my throat tremble and bite down on my lip and bear in silence the pain threatening to stun me.

  A tiny sob touched my ear, Kotobuki turned her back on us, and she ran off, her cane clacking.

  When I heard the door slam shut, I felt as if something important was being shredded from the inside of my heart.

  Miu plopped her head down and pressed it against my chest.

  Even though she’d been racked with sobs up until now, she wore a satisfied smile.

  She closed her eyes as if listening closely for the feeble beating of my heart and softly murmured, “Thank you for believing me. You’ll be on my side from now on, right? You’ll believe anything I say and listen to a-a-anything I tell you, right?”

  Did I really believe Miu?

  Had I been right to say that I believed her?

  While I felt the fatigue and despair of sinking wordlessly into a deep, muddy bog, unable to move even a single finger, I gazed out the darkening window.

  Was it really, really okay…to be like this?

  But how could Giovanni cast off or doubt Campanella?

  Campanella was everything Giovanni idealized.

  * * *

  Everyone says I’m a liar.

  They shut me out from their groups and look at me coldly or whisper dirty things or laugh cruelly.

  “That kid’s a liar. Don’t talk to him.”

  But I was the one who didn’t want to say a thing to them.

  I did things they couldn’t do, and I saw things they couldn’t see. I was able to hear things that they couldn’t hear.

  I wonder why no one else notices the things that the sky and clouds and rainbows, that the trees and grass, that the school building are telling us. I wonder if they don’t understand how to ask erasers and buckets and brooms to tell their stories.

  My world was always spilling over with new stories, and I was the king of my world.

  So I never wanted to put myself into their cramped, boring worlds, and I was just peachy all on my own!

  One day you came into my world.

  You approached me with an unwary, innocent smile and begged me for stories. You started to share the stories that only I had seen, the stories that were mine alone.

  By the time I realized I’d made a mistake, my world had fallen into brutal ruin and lay destroyed in tatters.

  You—!

  Your arrogance—!

  Your cruelty—!

  You took everything from me!

  Note:

  It’s too late to act the part of the mother! When you only show your face once every two months and spew spiteful words, it makes me want to kill you.

  The phone again.

  That’s the thirtieth time today. They know I hate the phone, and they call me anyway.

  Even though I tell them to text me, they don’t listen. They’re smiling repulsively on the other end of the phone. They’ll keep calling and calling and calling until I answer.

  It’s not like I’m scared.

  No! I
’m not! No! No! I hope you die, B!

  * * *

  The next morning out of nowhere, Akutagawa punched me in the face.

  For a second, I didn’t know what had happened.

  When I opened my bag and was transferring notes and textbooks to my desk, Akutagawa came over to me with a grim expression on his face and jabbed his fist at me without a word.

  There was a crack! and pain ran through my cheek like fire had been pressed against it, and sparks scattered through my brain.

  As I staggered, my hips collided with the desk behind me, and the desk and chair fell over with a huge noise. I hit the ground on my butt, too. The taste of rust and the slimy sensation of blood spread through my mouth as screams went up around me.

  My burning cheek and the throbbing beat of pain in my temple eventually told me that I’d been punched. While I was still gaping, Akutagawa grabbed me by the collar and forced me to stand.

  There was no trace of his usual placidity as he closed in on me, and his almond-shaped eyes glinted with a fierce anger. Akutagawa shouted with the force of a snapping dog.

  “I heard you told Asakura you believed her right in front of Kotobuki!”

  Ah, so he was angry about what happened yesterday. For him, a bundle of self-control, to lay his emotions bare and rage like this without paying the slightest attention to the people around him—

  “Did you hear that from Kotobuki?”

  The moment I muttered that in a rasping voice, Akutagawa’s eyebrows went up even farther. He grabbed me around the neck, though I was still dazed, shook me, and unleashed a fiery attack on me.

  “I heard that from Asakura! She said you defended her and drove Kotobuki off. That Kotobuki left in tears! That you said, ‘Miu wouldn’t lie…I believe her’! Why would you do something that stupid?! Asakura—she was laughing!”

  A thorny arrow dug through my flesh, piercing my chest.

  Asakura was laughing!

  His words were filled with dark rage and criticism.

  When I wasn’t there, Miu was laughing! Akutagawa had said it clearly.

  Miu was tricking me. That she was mocking me behind my back—

  So then what was I supposed to do?!

  What was he saying I could have done right then in that situation?! Should I have defended Kotobuki and condemned Miu? Should I have shouted that Miu was a liar? Was I supposed to just watch in silence as Miu jumped out of the window?!

  Kotobuki’s silent cascade of tears and Miu’s satisfied-looking smile came to my mind one after another, and my mind grew muddied. It felt like my breath would stop in my throat.

  I hadn’t wanted to hurt Kotobuki like that, either! I hadn’t wanted to make her cry!

  But it wasn’t possible to take both Miu’s and Kotobuki’s hands at the same time. The instant I held Kotobuki’s hands to pull her back, Miu might have thrown herself from the building like she did two years ago!

  But he was still blaming me?

  He was telling me that Miu’s tears and screaming were all fake?

  My head thudded with the rage that came welling up from deep inside my chest.

  What…what was he doing having conversations like that with Miu when I wasn’t around?!

  The colorful roses I’d seen in Miu’s room reawakened sharply on my eyelids, and a futile displeasure stabbed sharply into my chest.

  “Oh, I see. Those flowers…they weren’t from a relative; they were from you.”

  My voice was harsh as I whispered and cold enough to make even me shiver.

  “What are you talking about?” Akutagawa asked, looking disgruntled. I shook off his grip and raised my voice as loud as he had.

  “You told me not to go see Miu again, but you were seeing her on the side and keeping it secret from me! That’s why you kept looking at me so guiltily! You’re just like me! You can’t stay away from Miu, either! And yet you’re angry at me because I took her side? You hit me? You really just want Miu to yourself, don’t you?”

  “Are you serious? If so, you’re an awful person. You don’t have a clue, Inoue!!”

  “And what is it I need to get a clue about?! You’re the one who’s an awful person, attacking me out of nowhere!”

  “If I didn’t hit you, you’d go your whole life without waking up, so that’s why I did you the favor! How long are you planning to keep the covers pulled over your head, dreaming?! Asakura isn’t the girl you think she is! You want to drive her into a corner again because you’re idealizing her like that?! You’re hurting her!”

  My depression exploded, and I punched Akutagawa on his right cheek.

  An aching shock coursed through my clenched fist, and this time Akutagawa staggered back and ran into a desk.

  Shrill screams went up around us. We were so caught up in battle that no one tried to get in between us.

  Akutagawa gritted his teeth and wiped his mouth with a sharp look. I glared back at him, right in his face.

  “So you say I don’t understand? So that means you understand everything about Miu? You sure you’re not just trying to be her confidant, that you get all worked up when she says your name?”

  Akutagawa decked me again. My teeth rattled at the impact.

  “Yeah, I want to understand Asakura! As a matter of fact, I have feelings for Asakura as a girl. But I don’t deify her like you do, and I don’t believe everything she says! I don’t deny who she really is!”

  My body was practically twitching with rage.

  What did he mean, who she really was? Was Akutagawa trying to say he knew what that was?! So he knew what Campanella wished for? Even though I don’t—!

  The core of my brain was trembling with heat, and my blood boiled and coursed through my body. I punched him again on the chin.

  “Nngh! I’ve watched Miu ever since we were kids! We were always together! Just ’cos Miu talks to you like a friend, don’t think you’ve got it made!!”

  Without even acknowledging the blood seeping from one corner of his mouth, Akutagawa grabbed my collar.

  “Does it bug you that much that Asakura disrespects me? Were you jealous of me? Then see her for who she is!!”

  He brought his face close to mine, narrowed his eyes in apparent suffering, and scrunched his brow.

  “I don’t care if you believe me. But please—you need to learn who the real Miu Asakura is, not the ideal you have in your mind. She’s not an angel or a goddess. She’s an ordinary girl with faults and weaknesses.”

  The bell rang, announcing the start of homeroom through the commotion our classmates were causing.

  Akutagawa shoved me away roughly and went back to his seat.

  Rage still smoldering within me, I turned my back on him, too, and sat down at my desk.

  Neither Akutagawa nor I moved from our seats even during the breaks, our faces still rigid, and we stubbornly refused to look at each other.

  Everyone else watched us from a distance.

  Even when school was over for the day, the swelling of my cheek didn’t go down.

  Alone in the book club, I thought about what Akutagawa had said. I rested my elbows on the old oak table and hung my head, groaning low at the pain burrowing into my chest.

  Akutagawa had clearly said that I was driving Miu into a corner.

  Placid, forthright Akutagawa had harangued me with those crazed accusations, had transformed with rage and punched me.

  “Asakura’s…not an angel or a goddess. She’s an ordinary girl with faults and weaknesses… See her for who she is!”

  Had the girl I’d seen up until now been an ideal Miu who I wished could be a certain way?

  I’d been by her side since childhood and watched her smile like light.

  But one day Miu turned a look like daggers on me and started avoiding me.

  Just like Giovanni and Campanella, who had been the best of friends, at some point stopped speaking to each other.

  Campanella, who was surrounded by friends, looked with pity on lonely Giovanni, who was tea
sed by his classmates about his father and trembled with embarrassment.

  Never knowing what Campanella thought, Giovanni was always uneasy. He didn’t know what Campanella wished for!

  In that same way—I wonder when I’d first lost sight of Miu? When had we first slipped past each other?

  After I revealed that I was Miu Inoue?

  At that time, Miu Inoue’s name was a topic of conversation everywhere. The fuss was getting too big, and I didn’t know how I should tell Miu.

  That I’d kept from her that I was writing a novel in secret and had submitted it and that it had been selected for the grand prize—

  That I was now selling under the overblown title of a beautiful and mysterious masked young author—

  So when I caught Miu at the water fountains on her way back from gym class and revealed the truth to her, I couldn’t fully meet her eye.

  “I’m…Miu Inoue.”

  I hunched up and flushed to my ears, as if I were a child who’s done something spectacularly wrong and expects to be scolded. I don’t know what Miu looked like as I forced the words out.

  Just:

  “Oh…so that was you.”

  The flat tone lingering in my ears; the blank face as cold as a doll’s, which I saw when I hesitantly lifted my eyes; and the bottomless terror that assaulted me then were all that remained in my memory.

  Without saying another word, Miu turned her back on me and left. After that, she started blatantly ignoring me.

  I was sure Miu was angry at me for winning.

  I’d always thought so, but had that really been the first time that Miu looked at me with those frigid, empty eyes?

  I sank into a sea of dark memories amid a sickening sensation that felt like bare hands squishing up my brain and a torturous pain that seemed to wring my heart out.

  The library I’d spent my time at with Miu, Miu’s favorite crepe shop, the fashion boutique for girls that she would drag me along to so often despite my embarrassment.