A cold arrow penetrated my heart.
Cruel, pitiless words.
“I planned to take away everything important to you. To lie to you and trick you into losing your friends and your girlfriend like an idiot.”
I couldn’t speak. My face, too, was hardened like stone and wouldn’t budge.
Unresisting, I was abused, shredded, and hollowed out.
Unable to move a muscle as if I’d stopped breathing but remained alive.
Miu picked up her crutch and decked me with it.
My head rolled back, and my body wheeled, and a burning pain dragged my consciousness back to the inescapable reality.
“How long are you gonna space out?! Get out! I’m tired of looking at you!”
She pointed at the door with her crutch.
“Why…?” I whispered in a rough voice. “What about me…wasn’t good enough? What can I do so you’ll forgive me?”
I want you to tell me. I would do anything, as long as you desired it.
I would give anything—my hands, my legs, my eyes, my life.
I wouldn’t even mind being burned in eternal flames, like Scorpio in Night of the Milky Way Railroad.
What do you want me to do? How can I atone?
I felt as if my heart would stop from the despair pressing in on me. Miu thrust her crutch sharply into my chest and shouted, “Then grant Campanella’s wish! But you don’t have a chance of figuring it out!”
And then she beat my shoulders, my arms, my head, and my chest again and again with her crutch.
As if she would never calm down no matter how much she beat me, crumpled on the ground, her face twisting, baring her teeth, again and again.
“Get out! Now! Get out! Get out! I hate you! Get ooout!”
The sound of Miu’s voice shouting crazily. The metallic sound ringing out clang, clang on my body. The pain slamming into my flesh.
I stood with a groan and fled the room as she had demanded. Because that was the sole thing of which I was capable.
When I touched my hand to my forehead, I felt a slimy sensation. I looked down at my palm and saw a red stain tingeing it. I pressed down on on my forehead firmly and wobbled down the hall.
My entire body still hurt, tortured, and I couldn’t breathe, as if I were still being beaten. A hot lump pushed in to fill my throat, and the world before me blurred.
Why? Why, Miu?
What did Campanella wish for? What is it you wish for?
I don’t know! I don’t!
As I walked through the hospital lobby, it felt like I bumped into several arms and shoulders, but I couldn’t apologize, either. I had such a terrible look on my face that they must have thought some catastrophe had befallen someone I loved. Nobody said anything to me.
I was sure it was night outside. The darkness of midwinter that freezes even the breath might hide how miserable I was. But I didn’t know if I would ever reach the place I sought, no matter where I walked.
I couldn’t walk any farther. I couldn’t even see the stars. I couldn’t advance a single step.
I was on the verge of crumpling to the ground.
Just then, I bumped into someone again.
This person didn’t draw away. A cool hand gently touched my burning brow.
“Konoha…”
A worried voice spoke my name.
When I looked up, Tohko was looking at me with sad, pained eyes, her face disheartened.
Her soft fingertips gently caressed my cheek.
“Didn’t I tell you to call me?”
The tears poured out and ran in big drops down my cheeks. I crumpled up at Tohko’s feet and sobbed, my shoulders shaking.
Chapter 6—Who Killed the Little Bird?
What have I done?!
Strange, this is a first. Again and again and again I did it. But still nothing happens. Nobody comes. I can’t hear them! I can’t see them! I can’t feel them!
Whenever I do that, the trash that they’ve tossed aside is supposed to be expelled from my body and disappear.
But still, nothing. No matter how much I do it, nothing changes. The black, sticky, reeking stuff continues to collect inside me.
Even though I did it!
Even though I did it over and over!
It’s still not enough? Do I have to keep doing it?
Every single day I do it, feeling like my stomach is twisting into knots. And before long, just the thought of doing it makes my head start to hurt, and I feel a wave of nausea.
But still, when I do it, everything gets better. I believed that the dirty stuff collecting in my chest, that the trembling anxiety, fear, rage, despair, all went away.
But no!
Even when I do it, the trash can doesn’t empty.
It’s your fault! You messed me up!
Even though I was the one who was supposed to take things from you.
Even though I was supposed to make you taste despair, to tie you up and keep you for the rest of your life.
Before I realized it, I was the one everything had been taken from.
Everything! You took everything! All of it! You stole it!
And yet you followed me around smiling without the least sense of guilt.
And you’re looking for more?
Are you going to carve it out of my body? My heart?
I have nothing left!
* * *
Tohko gently squeezed my hands as I continued to cry soundlessly and took me to a karaoke booth.
“Here no one else will know if you cry.”
Told that in a placid voice with a clear face, the tears I’d briefly reined in spilled out again, and for a good forty minutes, I snuffled and dripped salty sweat from my eyes.
In the midst of it, in broken flashes, I would feel as if Miu was telling me that she hated me, telling me to get out, accusing me.
Tohko sat down next to me and barely squeezed my right hand.
I sobbed so much that my throat burned and the insides tingled and my head started to hurt. Finally I grew tired, and no more tears would come. Even so, my head drooped and my shoulders shook a little, and Tohko started to talk to me kindly, as if she were an older sister.
“You know, before I ran into you, I was in Nanase’s room. She was really worried about you. She asked me to help you.”
My chest felt like it would tear open with a different kind of pain.
Kotobuki had said something like that to Tohko.
Despite the horrible things I’d done to her. Why did I hurt people even though I didn’t mean to?
As I bit down on my lip and choked back tears, my throat trembling, Tohko softly ran her fingers, interlocked with mine, over the back of my hand and murmured in a warm voice, “You know, when you’re sad, it helps to imagine something totally ridiculous. Like, how about a story about an upperclassman you admire who does pole vault for the track team and gets on a toy boat made of folded grass to go on a journey for ascetic training? Girls try to get the love letters they’ve poured themselves into to him, but he jumps, whoooosh! into the river.”
“…That’s an improv story I wrote,” I said with a catching sob.
Then she said, “Oh, then what about a story where you go to the first day of class and all your classmates are pandas? It’s a little surreal, but it’d be pretty fun. And then—”
Again she started happily telling me the summary of a snack I’d written a while ago.
“And then—the pandas are all murderous with rage and stomp on the desks. See, if you picture that, you cheer right up.”
“…Tohko, when you ate that story, you said it was like white chocolate sprinkled with dried sardines and wasn’t a fairy tale; then you slumped over.”
“Then let’s forget that one. There’s a macho surfer riding down Mount Fear…”
She recounted the improv stories I’d written for her up till now like gentle fairy tales a mother would tell her child, one after another. Despite the fact that she’d complained bitterly at t
he time that they tasted weird or weren’t any good, that she had screamed and wept.
She told the tales in a pure, gentle voice and with a mild smile, and they seeped into my wounded heart, warm and familiar like sweet medicine, as if I were hearing a different story.
“Okay, the next one’s a story of the friendship of country girls. The two were very close, and they exchanged letters to each other with origami. It’s marvelously sweet and delicious, like fried bread dusted all over with soy flour.”
“Aren’t those all my stories?”
Tohko smiled like an unsullied flower.
“Well, they’re all stories you wrote for me. I remember all of them. I would never forget a single one.”
A warm voice like a spring breeze.
A gentle hand squeezing mine.
A tiny star was shining into my heart that had been shut off with despair. My feelings slowly buoyed up and were washed clean.
“You know, it’s been two years now since I met you, Konoha. You’ve matured in that time, just a little. You’re not the Konoha you used to be. You might not realize it yourself, but…since I, the book girl, who’s been eating your stories the whole time, says so, it’s for sure.”
She made this cheerful declaration and squeezed the hand gripping mine a little.
Was that really true?
Even though my shreds of confidence had broken down and I was totally lost.
“Say…remember how when we were traveling through space with your map, I got totally absorbed in reading Portrait of Shunkin at the library?
“In order to sear Shunkin’s beauty in his heart forever, Sasuke destroys his own eyes.
“That’s one form of a very crazed, reverent love, and no matter how often I read it, I’m overwhelmed by Sasuke’s emotions, and I tremble.
“But I also wonder if he was right to do that. That maybe for Sasuke and for Shunkin, at least, attempting to preserve the beauty of the person you love and nothing more was a good thing. While I think that they were probably happy, I wonder if there wasn’t another way. I think maybe they could have achieved a different form of happiness.”
As I felt the warmth of Tohko’s hand, I wondered, too.
If I had been able to simply hold on to the beautiful memories of Miu in my heart, would I have been happy now?
But I’d found out that Miu wasn’t a white-winged angel; she was just an ordinary girl who tricked and despised others.
“You’ve always treasured Miu, and you’ve suffered because of her, so it would hurt to have her say that she hates you.
“But the way you are now, you can face the real Miu. I think you can show her a different path than simple hatred. That’s…what I think.”
For the last few hours, I’d thought it impossible to even stand up ever again—that the shadows were dark and deep, I didn’t know which way to go, and could do nothing but crouch on the ground as my wounds bled.
But Tohko had put a bandage over my forehead and stopped the blood.
And the vicious sandstorm raging in my chest had quieted at some point.
The phone in the booth rang, and Tohko stood up to pick it up.
“Okay. No, we don’t need an extension.”
She put the phone down and turned around, and with a straightforward smile, she said, “They said we’ve got five minutes left. Those two hours went by so fast. Shall we go home now, Konoha?”
“…Okay.”
I stood up, too.
The wind had stopped, but it was bone-chillingly cold outside. The air was sharp, and my face felt prickly and numb.
As Tohko walked beside me, she shivered and huddled in on herself.
“Urgh, winter nights really ought to be spent at home relaxing at a heated table and eating The Tales of Ise or something like that. The forecast said it might snow next week, but that would be awful. My National Center Test is on Saturday.”
“What did you just say?”
Tohko bent her head to blow into her white hands, then repeated, “I said, Saturday is the first day of my National Center Test.”
“That’s tomorrow, though!”
My eyes bugged out.
“Yes, ever since antiquity, the day after Friday has been Saturday.”
“That isn’t what I’m saying! What are you doing here the day before your exam?!”
“What?…But when I went to visit Nanase, you were standing in the lobby looking sooo gloomy.”
At Tohko’s words, my cheeks grew hot in no time.
She had a point, but…She probably couldn’t just go home and study in a situation like that, but…If she had gone home, I didn’t know what would have become of me by now, but…
Ah, but—but—she’s way too unaware of what it takes to prepare for exams! And she was in such a bad position with her low grades!
I pulled off my scarf and wrapped it around Tohko’s neck.
“I’m not going to tell you to memorize math formulas or work on problem sets at this point. Today you need to stay warm and go to bed early. If you get sick, your F-level skills will drop to about a J.”
I took off my gloves, too, grabbed Tohko’s hands, and pulled them on her.
Tohko pouted firmly and protested. “I got up to a D on the last prep class test, you know. I’m good at the real thing, so I ought to be able to exploit my abilities for a C or a B, then.”
“That wouldn’t be ability; that would be dumb luck or a miracle.”
“Then I’ll go perform a miracle.”
The book girl with the pure white scarf around her throat and the slightly large gloves on her hands smiled brilliantly like a ray of light.
I was astounded at how cavalier she was, but at the same time, I was a little relieved that she wasn’t nervous or anything for the test day.
Tohko buried her neck in my scarf, pressed her gloved hands to her face.
“So waaaaaarm.”
She whispered happily, walking with even lighter steps than before.
Her long braids bobbed.
Even on a gloomy road at night, just having someone nearby made me feel warm. Moving forward, courage welled up in me.
“Well, I go this way.”
At the point where our paths separated, Tohko spun back around toward me.
“Thank you for the scarf and gloves. I’ll give them back to you in the clubroom on Monday.”
“Oh, Tohko—”
I stopped Tohko as she started moving away and pulled a pencil case out of my bag.
Tohko inclined her head quizzically. I frantically told her to wait, opened the case, grabbed a mechanical pencil I always used to write improv stories, and held it out to her.
“Take this with you to the test tomorrow. It’ll be a good luck charm to make miracles happen.”
Why had I done something so embarrassing, so unscientific, and so unlike me?
I was sure it was because I wanted to give something back to Tohko since she’d tried so hard to cheer me up.
Tohko’s eyes went round, and she looked at me, flushed.
My cheeks were burning, too.
Her gloved hands suddenly and gently enfolded my hand, which was tightly gripping the pencil.
Lowering her long eyelashes and dipping her head slightly, a small smile came over Tohko’s lips.
“Then you need to fill this pencil up completely with your feelings, Konoha. Pray that I’ll be able to knock out the math problems.”
I rested my other hand on top of Tohko’s, bowed my head in embarrassment, and murmured, “I pray that a miracle happens, and Tohko can solve her math problems like they’re nothing and pass the test for her first-choice school.”
In the darkness that was so bitingly cold that our exhaled breath showed white, at the empty crossroads, standing so close that our foreheads almost touched, feeling the warmth of each other’s bodies and my raging heartbeat—I transmitted the words from my heart through the tips of my fingers.
The fingers on the hand I touched though the glove
s grew sharply warmer.
Tohko raised her face.
“Thank you.”
Her black eyes softened, and she smiled with heaps of happiness. Clutching the mechanical pencil preciously, she moved off.
“I think I’ll do all right tomorrow, thanks to you, Konoha.”
“Don’t dawdle; go straight home. And stop doing stupid stuff like losing yourself in a book in the bath and not noticing that the water got cold and catching a fever. And don’t hang around with wet hair; dry it really well and then go straight to bed. Don’t forget to set your alarm.”
“Okaaay.”
As she grew more distant, she waved the hand clutching the mechanical pencil brightly, a smile on her face.
I watched her go for a long, long time, until her slender form disappeared into the darkness of the night.
* * *
I have to take back what was stolen from me.
You think I’m going to stand to lose a single thing more?
Even when I do it now, it doesn’t help. Filthy words pour out of the trash can, my mind doesn’t function properly, and my heart just shatters.
Take it back; you’re gonna take it back.
Throw your heart into limbo, steel your gaze, and listen up.
It’s not going well. I couldn’t sleep again today. I’m scared of the night passing away and dawn coming.
When I see from inside my cold room that the sun is rising into the pale, lightening sky, I feel like I’m being judged and suffering a punishment. I feel as if my body is being torn apart in the brilliant light that clarifies everything.
Don’t be weak! Even if my body breaks down in shambles, even if my limbs snap off, even if I trade my life for it, I will take it back.
Oh, if I do that, I know I’ll reach the star of happiness.
And maybe there I’ll finally learn what “true happiness” is. In that warm, pure holy land, maybe I’ll be able to sleep peacefully.
Note:
Today there were fifty calls.
Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation Page 13
