I was staggered and confused. What was Tohko saying?
She’d talked to Miu on the phone?
Miu looked ever so slightly scared.
She was looking up at Tohko entranced, as if she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
Inexplicably, right before my stunned eyes, Tohko extended a pure white hand and said, “Hello, Miu.
“My name is Tohko Amano—I’m Konoha’s club president and, as you can see, a book girl.”
Chapter 9—Back When You Looked at the Sky
Outside the sky was dyed with a fiery setting sun.
A black limousine was parked in front of the hospital, and we got into it as Tohko instructed.
Tohko, Miu, Akutagawa, Kotobuki, and I arrived at an observatory on the outskirts of town. It was a domed building surrounded by dark trees and was apparently a planetarium. Tohko pushed open the door, which had a CLOSED sign hung on it, and went inside.
Miu, her eyes bright red from crying too much, hunched her body over like an adopted kitten and clung to me tightly as we walked. Kotobuki and Akutagawa followed behind us. Both of their faces were hard, perhaps because they were nervous.
I was confused, too.
I didn’t know what Tohko was thinking.
I had missed my chance to ask, but I wondered about how Miu and Tohko had talked on the phone before.
The theater was dyed in an unsullied indigo, as if the sun had just fallen below the horizon. Scattered stars dotted the round ceiling, still small and faint. The projector set up in the center of the concentric rings of seats was like a rocket preparing to launch into space.
“Tohko. Come in.”
Her brown hair waving, exuding a vibrant aura, Maki came to greet us.
The granddaughter of our school’s director and a font of information, she was also a bit of a weirdo. She was usually in her studio on the top floor of the school’s music building, drawing the pictures that were her hobby. She was also obsessed with Tohko and had made ardent appeals for Tohko to model nude for her.
“I prepared everything exactly like you told me to. After last time, this makes two favors you owe me. I’m going to get you to pay me back in full before graduation, you know. I wouldn’t want you covered in bruises or open wounds. Although that in itself might be erotic.”
She scooped up one of Tohko’s braids with the tips of her fingers and smiled mysteriously.
Tohko’s cheeks flushed, and she scrambled away from her. “I-I told you we’d talk about it after my exams are done. Um…I wonder where Ryuto is.”
Tohko bent her mouth into a frown and looked a little petulant.
“That libertine boy is already here with his girlfriend. Look—”
I could see Ryuto sitting in the upper seats in the direction Maki pointed.
Ryuto had Takeda on his knee and was stroking her hair affectionately. Then he brought his face close to hers and seemed to be whispering to her. Reclining on Ryuto’s chest, Takeda didn’t move a muscle. The look on her face as it floated out of the clear darkness was as vacant as a doll’s, and she didn’t so much as blink. There was no sense of life to her.
When I saw her like that, I felt a chill.
I had heard how Takeda was doing from Tohko, but I’d had no idea it had gotten this bad!
Miu clung tightly to my arm and hoarsely murmured, “What’s wrong with that girl?”
She seemed to be shocked by Takeda’s state, fear coming into her eyes, and trembled slightly.
Kotobuki and Akutagawa’s expressions were both frozen with tension.
“Ryuto.”
When Tohko called out to him, Ryuto looked in our direction.
He turned to Tohko and smiled sunnily at her, then whispered something to Takeda again. He lifted her to her feet, then came down the aisle with his arm around her shoulders.
“’Sup, Konoha. Looks like you made it out of the hospital all right, huh, Kotobuki?”
Ryuto’s voice and expression were normal enough to confuse us.
“Ryuto, is Takeda…?”
Takeda was still staring blankly into space, not showing any interest in us, leaning back against Ryuto without a word.
“It seems like she can hear my voice at least. But it’s like she can’t react.”
No one said a word. Ryuto pulled Takeda’s head against him and gave a sparkling laugh.
“I’ve got lots of experience with girls a teensy bit more delicate than normal. She’ll get better sooner or later. Right, Chee?”
His words and the hand stroking Takeda’s hair were both strong and cheerful.
Tohko smiled kindly at Takeda.
“I thought I’d try to cheer Chia up, so I had Ryuto bring her along today. Enjoy yourselves, okay?”
Takeda stayed silent, of course.
Tohko sat us down and stood in front of the projector.
Miu sat on my right and Kotobuki on my left. Both of their faces were tense. Akutagawa sat down in the seat behind Miu; then Ryuto and Takeda sat two seats down the row from him. Maki sat in a seat that was diagonally across from us, pretty far away, and crossed her legs regally.
The lights dimmed gradually, and the number of stars scattered on the ceiling grew.
The faint spotlight shining on the projector was like moonlight pouring down from heaven, picking out Tohko’s willowy frame.
A pleasant, gentle voice flowed into the clear darkness.
“This is the night sky as it appears from Taneyamagahara in Iwate Prefecture.
“When the author Kenji Miyazawa was in his third year at Morioka Agriculture and Forestry College, he came to this place as part of a geological survey.
“At the time, Miyazawa had just published the journal Azaria with his friends, and every day was fulfilling, and he was overflowing with idealism and hopes for the future. Having been deeply impressed by the beauty of nature he’d seen at this happiest time of his life, Miyazawa made Taneyamagahara the subject of several stories in his later creative work. For example, this poem is an unfinished draft composed of four parts, which he wrote eight years later in 1925.”
Tohko closed her eyes as if imagining the scene as Miyazawa had seen it and recited part of the poem.
“Banded ridges flowing across the ocean, layer on layer,
The horizon swelling and falling silently, silently.
Ah—everything is transparent. All of it.”
She barely lifted her lowered eyelids, gave a small smile, and went on.
“It’s said that Miyazawa’s most famous work, Night of the Milky Way Railroad, was inspired by this place.
“The sky full of stars shining overhead made him imagine the milky way station and the train that departed from it. I imagine that people who haven’t read Milky Way Railroad have at least heard how the story goes.
“The protagonist Giovanni is working while he goes to school in order to help his sick mother.
“Giovanni had a childhood friend name Campanella, but as they grew up, the two grew apart, and for a while, they hadn’t even been able to talk to each other.
“On the night of a festival, Campanella goes to a river surrounded by friends to launch candlelit gourds onto the river, but Giovanni was all alone.
“Then, before he realizes it, Giovanni is inside a train running through the universe. Campanella was waiting for him there. The two of them went off on a journey on the Milky Way Railroad together.”
The round sky looming over our heads got a little darker again.
“They say there were inspirations for Giovanni and Campanella.
“The shy and lonely Giovanni was Miyazawa himself, and there are several theories as to the model for Campanella, but in general, people agree it was Miyazawa’s little sister, Toshi.
“Toshi was two years younger than Miyazawa and was always an excellent student at the head of her class. It was only natural that Miyazawa was proud of her, and she adored him, too. They were the best of friends, and even when Toshi went to a school in Tokyo and they
were separated, they continued writing to each other the whole time.
“When he was eighteen, he was enlightened by the Lotus Sutra and his conflicts with his father, who was a fervent believer in Pure Land Buddhism, deepened. Toshi understood why he’d done that, and alone in all the family to believe the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, she became a support for Miyazawa. For him, Toshi had a role without equal, more than being his little sister, with whom he could share the world and his thoughts.”
I wondered what Tohko was trying to tell us.
A fuzzy mist spread through my heart. But entranced by her clear voice and kind gaze, I listened, fixated.
Miu was staring at Tohko, too, her face stiff.
“Giovanni and Campanella were the same way. Clever Campanella was a brilliant person that Giovanni admired, was the person with whom he shared a warm history, and was the dear traveling companion he wished would go everywhere, on and on forever with him.”
Tohko smiled with a placid look in her eyes.
“Their relationship is a little bit like Itsuki and Hatori’s from Miu Inoue’s novel.”
Miu started in surprise.
Beside me, it felt like Kotobuki was squirming, too. And although I, too, felt my mouth drying out, I held my breath.
“In this case, I suppose Itsuki would be Giovanni. Itsuki is the one telling the story, a girl in her second year of middle school. She cares deeply for her childhood friend Hatori, and they come and go from school together and do their homework at the library near school and spend their days in modest happiness.
“Hatori is a cheerful boy who resembles the open sky, and he always lets Itsuki read the stories that he’s written. Hatori’s dream is to be a writer, and Itsuki encouraged him in that. She would tell Hatori that if anyone could become a real author, it was him.”
Miu was gripping the edge of her seat with quivering fingers. A searing irritation clouded her eyes.
“And like Giovanni and Campanella, Itsuki and Hatori were modeled on someone.
“In the real world, Itsuki was a boy and Hatori was a girl. And the one who had a glorious debut as a novelist wasn’t Hatori; it was Itsuki.”
A look of naked loathing was turned in Tohko’s direction. Tohko stared it down and continued what she was saying.
“—As a result, the two were estranged, and Hatori began crafting another story on top of the one Itsuki had written. It was a story that denied Itsuki’s world, a story of hatred, pain, and despair.”
Miu’s intensity was such that she might be able to kill Tohko with her eyes. The penetrating tension in the air prickled my skin as well, just sitting beside her. But Tohko didn’t quail.
“And that’s not all. Hatori started to take revenge on Itsuki even in the real world.
“Since Hatori had broken her body, she was in the hospital, so she couldn’t move around on her own. Therefore, she tried to use Itsuki’s classmate. But he was an honest boy and became Itsuki’s friend, and the test ended in failure. Even so, Hatori didn’t give up. Next she shifted her target to a girl close to Itsuki and tried to make contact with her.
“In the midst of this, Hatori found an unexpected ally.”
Miu gulped.
An ally?!
Who in the world was she talking about—Akutagawa? Kotobuki? No, that was impossible. They had both tried to keep Miu away from me.
Then who—?!
My heart grew heavy with an alarming premonition. Tohko posed a question to us.
“Did you know that there’s a mysterious character named Professor Bulcanillo in Night of the Milky Way Railroad?
“This professor exists in the extant first, second, and third drafts, but he disappears in the final draft. He appears at the end of the story, relates how Giovanni’s journey was a personal experiment of his, and shows Giovanni the path into the future. And in the alternate story that Hatori wrote as well, a person corresponding to Professor Bulcanillo appears. More accurately, in the scrawled notes written in the margins of the story—”
As if guided along by Tohko’s words, Bulcanillo’s experiment and the red letters surfaced in my mind.
She was right; those words had been in the notes. Along with references to a B.
“Shut up, B!” “Be quiet, B!” “Don’t order me around, B!”
So B stood for Bulcanillo!
“While on the one hand, this B that appears again and again helps with Hatori’s plans, the person constantly calls Hatori on the phone and annoys her and even drives her into a corner. Was B Hatori’s ally? Her enemy? Either way, B’s figure flits behind the events of reality.”
Tohko turned her intelligent gaze on Miu and me and declared, “It wasn’t chance that Konoha was reunited with Miu in the hospital.
“Nor that Konoha ran into Miu’s mother later on in Miu’s hospital room.
“Why did Miu’s mother, who only comes once every other month, come on that day? There was a note calling B a traitor. From that, I imagined that perhaps it had been B who summoned Miu’s mother.”
My heart shrank tightly in on itself.
So B had caused Miu’s mother and I to meet and made the hatred Miu had kept hidden explode.
Who was it who’d first told me that Kotobuki had been admitted to the hospital?
Who was it who’d asked me to go visit Kotobuki the day before I met Miu’s mother—?
As I traced the memory out, a cold hand stroked my neck.
“I know it also wasn’t chance that I went to visit Nanase that day and ran into Konoha in the lobby. And perhaps it was B who sent Hatori’s story to Konoha’s computer? I don’t believe Miu had the time to scan in that many pages at that time, and Miu couldn’t have gotten together the equipment for it on her own.”
Tohko’s gaze streamed past above us.
The shock of how impossible it was made my breathing harder.
“Who was B? What was B’s objective? You know, don’t you, Ryuto?”
Behind us, a formidable voice answered.
“Yeah. ’Cos I was the one who got Chee and Miu together in the first place.”
Miu bit down on her lip with a grim expression and hung her head.
In contrast, Kotobuki and I turned to look up at him, though we stayed seated.
Akutagawa and Maki were both looking at Ryuto—Akutagawa with a look of surprise, Maki with a grimace.
And then Kotobuki and I were gaping.
A smile carved itself into Ryuto’s lips, as if he was enjoying this situation. Beside him, Takeda was staring into space with vacant eyes.
Clenching her fists, Miu suddenly moaned, her voice tinged with loathing, “That’s right! He brought B—brought Chia Takeda to me!”
So it was her—Takeda was B.
I looked at Miu reflexively, then turned back to look up at Ryuto with bitter emotions.
“What in the world is going on, Ryuto? Since when have you known Miu?”
Keeping a smile on his lips that agitated my heart, he answered, “She called my house.”
“Called? On the phone? Why would Miu—,” I started to ask, then gasped.
Tohko had said she’d talked with Miu on the phone before. What if, the way Miu had sent a text to Kotobuki, she had also called Tohko—
Tohko spoke in a kind voice.
“Miu called me. Ryuto was the one who answered.”
Her fists still clenched, Miu bit down on her lip, mortified. “…Nngh.”
I’d heard from Akutagawa that Miu had seen me when I’d visited Kotobuki in the hospital over the summer. That day Tohko had been with me. Miu must have remembered me saying Tohko’s name.
Then she had called the house of the Tohko Amano in Akutagawa’s phone.
In order to harass her as she had Kotobuki.
But Ryuto had been the one to pick up.
“She seemed pretty weird, and it got to me, y’know? So I listened in while Tohko talked to her.”
Their conversation had been incredibly brief.
“Thi
s is Tohko speaking. Who is this?”
“What…Konoha?”
“Are you Miu?”
This was all that Ryuto heard, but Tohko had stood in front of the phone for a moment, lost in thought, after she hung up. Even when he asked who had called, she’d said, “Someone you don’t know,” and wouldn’t tell him.
“I-it was because you scared me, saying my name out of the blue like that.” Miu groaned again.
Tohko had probably made a sudden connection between the name Miu that I’d let slip earlier and the person on the phone. Even though she was usually happy-go-lucky, she had a sharp instinct about odd things.
On the other hand Ryuto, whose interest had been piqued by the person on the phone, had formed a theory about where she was from the music of an automaton clock and the voices of nurses he’d heard through the phone.
After that, he’d gotten friendly with people at the hospital, like usual, and was happy just to confirm that there was a girl by the name of Miu at the hospital.
Thus, Ryuto dropped by Miu’s room unexpectedly one day.
“I can’t believe you!” Miu muttered irritably, clenching her jaw.
After Ryuto had brazenly greeted Miu, he’d suggested, “I’ll keep you a secret from Konoha. So I want you to let Tohko focus on her exams for a little while.”
And then he started sauntering in unannounced from time to time.
“Y’know what I mean? She was deliciously dangerous and the type that I go for. I was curious how she related to you, too.”
Miu glowered straight at Ryuto’s grinning face as he brashly told the story. Akutagawa knit his brows in apparent displeasure as well.
Had the person Miu told me was a relative in fact been Ryuto?
“Ryuto, did you ever take orange roses when you went to visit her?”
“Oh, those were ’cos I’m friends with a girl who works at a flower shop near the hospital, so she gave them to me.”
“I wish you’d die,” Miu said in a harsh voice. It sounded like she really couldn’t stand Ryuto.
Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation Page 19
