Miu was still crying.
Kotobuki and Akutagawa, Takeda and Ryuto, and Maki were watching the final chapter of this story with somehow reverent expressions.
Tohko was smiling peacefully.
The artificial stars in the sky had transformed into the real thing.
Above us, stars were shining brightly.
The pilgrims were still walking, their sights set on the holy land imagined in their hearts.
Ah—everything is transparent now. All of it.
Epilogue—The Beginning of the End
I first saw Tohko Amano in early summer.
I was practicing walking in the halls of the hospital like I always did, and around a corner, I heard a voice call, “Konoha.”
When I snuck a peek, Konoha had come up the stairs with a girl I didn’t recognize.
My heart somersaulted in my chest, and I thought I might forget to breathe.
In the two years since I’d seen him, Konoha had gotten taller and a little more grown-up. He was carrying a bag from a candy store, and the girl with him was holding a bouquet of roses and baby’s breath.
A girl with long braids, willowy and pale, pretty and kind looking.
She walked beside Konoha as if she belonged there and talked to him in familiar tones.
“You apologize to Nanase, too, Konoha.”
“Sure, whatever. All I have to do is bow my head and say I’m sorry that she got wrapped up in my half-baked president’s crime spree and got hurt, right?”
“I don’t think you should say that. It lacks a certain consideration for your president!”
“You’re the one who should stop causing so much trouble for your underclassmen.”
Konoha frowned and griped.
It was the first time I’d seen him look like that. I could see that even as he sighed in exasperation and abused her, he had opened up to her. My brain was on fire, and my chest felt like it was being stabbed with a knife.
Who? Who is she? Konoha? Who is that girl?
After you made me taste despair and threw me into darkness, why are you walking so close to a girl other than me that your shoulders are almost touching? She’s calling you by your first name?
Spiraling black flames burned inside my heart, and it felt like I was going insane.
Afterward, I heard from Kazushi that the person I’d seen was your club president and that she was named Tohko Amano.
The two of you had come to visit your classmate Nanase Kotobuki.
Tohko Amano and Nanase Kotobuki.
I decided the one I would drive from your side first would be Tohko Amano. I couldn’t stand Nanase Kotobuki, either, but I would harass her enough later. First was Tohko Amano.
So I decided what I would do, and I called the number I stole from Kazushi’s cell phone, but I was dumbfounded when she said my name out of nowhere, and I hung up.
And then to top it off, a rude boy who said he was Amano’s little brother showed up in my hospital room.
“If you really wanna get at Tohko, I won’t stop you,” Ryuto Sakurai said in a way that sounded like he was enjoying my reaction. “But Tohko’s a killer, y’know. If you knock heads with her at the very beginning, you’re definitely gonna lose.”
I was so bitter that my heart sizzled with it, but it looked like he was right. No matter how I looked at it, I was the one unequipped to fight over the phone. When I remembered her clear, fearless voice asking “Miu?” an inexplicable anxiety rose up within me.
So I switched my target to Nanase Kotobuki, who seemed weaker than Tohko Amano.
When I wrote a text to her, Kotobuki responded with interest. I could tell right away that even though she was acting tough, she was scared, and I knew I could crush her easily. I was so pleased I could hardly stand it.
I sent her text after text, and just like I had done with Haraguchi, I told her that Konoha and I weren’t exactly strangers, and I even told her where Konoha’s moles were. The first time Kotobuki came to my room in the hospital, I smeared soap around the door and made her fall.
But while I tormented Nanase Kotobuki, somewhere inside myself I was still hesitant to see Konoha.
Unable to sleep at night, I thought back on the past again and again and wanted to see him so, so much, to hear his voice, until it felt like my heart would crumble—but I was equally afraid of seeing him. I didn’t want Konoha to see the ugly bird I had become. I didn’t want to acknowledge that weakness in myself.
It was then that Ryuto Sakurai brought the girl with him.
Chia Takeda watched me wail and storm with a face devoid of expression, as if she was wearing a mask.
The next day, when Takeda came to my room alone and offered her help, I was shocked. I asked her what she had to gain by doing something like that, and with a smile she responded, “It’s an experiment.”
I thought it sounded like something Professor Bulcanillo would say.
To be honest, it was a little disturbing, but since I couldn’t move, I needed someone to help me.
And then when I heard Takeda say, “I don’t really like Nanase that much. She’s so ordinary and sneaky,” I managed to find an interpretation I could accept. Kotobuki was probably an offense to her, and she wanted to use me to harass her.
In that case, I’ll use her instead, I thought.
After I accepted B’s—Takeda’s—offer, it was like all the time that had been piling up burst its walls and started flowing.
I was going to be reunited with Konoha at long last.
After that night, it was even harder to sleep.
I hated Konoha. Hated him so, so much. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to break him.
But behind that wish that made my throat tremble and burn, I was still unsure of myself.
If I could pass off the lie, things would go back to the way they used to be, right? Konoha would love me, right? He would stay with me forever, right? There could be no greater happiness than that, right?
B wouldn’t allow such naïveté. As if to show me that Konoha and I both had to be hurt even worse, she called my mom and dragged my true thoughts out for Konoha to see.
After Konoha left, my body hurt so intensely it felt like I was being ripped apart. I wailed and lay defeated on the floor with tears spilling down my face. When B appeared before me in that state, she looked down at me with cold eyes and muttered, “You wished for all of this.”
I threw Konoha’s book at B. It hit her in the chest, but her expression didn’t change at all. She picked the book up and left the room without a word.
I wonder if there was despair inside B—Chia Takeda—that day. If there was sadness.
Now, after the tale has ended, I think about how she felt. Maybe Chia Takeda was still seeking something unobtainable, just like me.
A little while ago, Takeda came with Sakurai to return the book.
All of us, who couldn’t be what we wanted to be.
All of us, wishing to be it anyway.
When our fingers touched against the book, a very slight sense of affection welled up in me.
Takeda was smiling, and beside her Sakurai was laughing in huge amusement.
And so just as a star had lodged within me, I knew that a tiny star was twinkling inside Takeda’s heart, as well.
Nanase Kotobuki came to see me, too.
“About that slap fight or whatever we had before…I’m sorry. I…went a little overboard.”
I was astounded by how she stuttered, her face red and her lips pursed.
If I were Kotobuki, I would never have apologized.
But I was so shocked that I also felt the knot in my chest relaxing.
“I don’t think I went too far. I actually regret not scratching you more.”
When I said that to her, her eyebrows went up, and she glared at me.
I bit back a laugh at her straightforward reaction and said, “I mean, I thought you were weak, but you’re actually tough. I was underestimating you.”
Kotobuki�
�s eyes went round, and then her mouth bent into a frown, and she said roughly, “I-if you’re looking for a fight, I’ll take you on anytime.”
When I heard that, I thought how nice it would be to be able to fight again.
That had been the first time I’d ever fought someone head-on.
I had always avoided telling the truth and fled into my own world.
Maybe I’d been wrong to do that.
That day under the starry sky, that book girl taught me a lot of things.
She gave me lots of important things.
Konoha wasn’t the boy who had chased after me back then.
Tohko Amano and Nanase Kotobuki had changed him, for sure.
If Miu Inoue wrote a second story, it wouldn’t be a story about Itsuki and Hatori. It would be something different.
I managed to accept that calmly.
Soon I’m going to get permission to go out, and I might go to the ocean. I’m going to burn the story I wrote. At night, if possible. Somewhere I can see the stars.
The book burning quietly, flickering and engulfed in red flames, is probably going to look like Scorpio from Night of the Milky Way Railroad.
I want to become the kind of person who can wish for the happiness of others like he did.
The kind who can do something for the benefit of someone besides themselves, even if it means burning their body a hundred times over—the kind who can be honestly happy about doing it. That’s who I want to be.
If I were, then someone else might say the same thing Konoha said to me.
That they’re happy because of me.
I’ll try to be a little bit…a very little bit…nicer to Kazushi, too.
Even though it’s so frustrating when he lectures me with that composed face. Because yesterday when I was looking out the window and murmuring lines from “Song of the Defeated Youth” to myself, he stood beside me without saying a word.
O stars, as if born from the cumulus
clouds, suspicious in the night
With your words quite unto yourselves
Though you inquire of us as you burn.
Taking the shape of Good Lodite
You decide to melt into the sky
Fluttering, seeming to tremble with light
You are mournful, simply by being stars.
When I recite this poem, it isn't simply sad.
Because I feel as if my heart were growing clearer…
* * *
Miu had told me she didn’t want me to come visit.
That day in the theater in the planetarium, she had turned to me with a fresh smile and said, “I’m going to get better, and this time I’ll come to see you.”
Then she left, leaning on Akutagawa for support.
“Inoue…don’t you want to go after her?” Kotobuki asked worriedly.
I too smiled and answered, “No. I’m pretty sure the next time Miu comes to see me will be a time for beginning and a time for ending.”
The end of the past.
The beginning of the future.
“Does that mean that you…still love Asakura?”
Kotobuki looked at me, her face terribly vulnerable and verging on tears.
“No. It won’t be like that. When I told Miu I loved her, it felt like a heavy lump that’s been in my heart had melted away like snow. My feelings about Miu…about lots of stuff.”
I didn’t think that was something sad.
Some melancholy remained deep in my heart, but the joy that was like looking at an open blue sky was stronger.
I clasped both of Kotobuki’s hands in my own, catching her by surprise, and with a smile that came straight from my heart, I said, “Thank you for getting into a fight with Miu for my sake, Kotobuki.”
Her face bright red, Kotobuki looked bewildered.
Tohko stood at a slight distance from us, talking to Ryuto and the girls.
But just then—
She turned back slightly in our direction.
Her lips curved a little, her eyes softened.
And a pretty smile came over her face. I could feel it.
Several days went by.
I heard that Akutagawa was going to the hospital every day. When I was eating lunch, he would tell me how Miu was doing unselfconsciously. He said she was dedicated to her physical therapy.
Takeda was back at school, too, and when I ran into her in the halls or the library, she would run up to me with a bright, puppy-like smile and a “Konohaaa!”
Takeda was going out with Ryuto experimentally.
“Ryu is the kind of person who doesn’t pick a step in order to get to his goal, so he’s like me that way, and I was scared, but…while I was out of school, he came to see me every day, and he talked to me. Even though I never said a word back, he talked in a cheerful voice for a really long time. Plus, the day that I asked Asakura’s mother to go to the hospital, it was Ryu who fixed it so that Tohko went to the hospital.”
So when Tohko had said, “It also wasn’t chance that I ran into Konoha at the hospital,” that’s what she’d meant.
Tohko, who had noticed Ryuto’s involvement with Miu, had probably deduced Takeda’s connection to Miu from there.
“I’m glad Ryu got her to go there. I’m glad that you didn’t totally break, Konoha,” Takeda said with a clear smile, looking up at me.
I wonder if Takeda will start to love Ryuto. Although apparently he was still seeing other girls, just like always.
When I’d seen Ryuto before and thanked him for his help, he’d said with a slightly bitter expression, “I wanted you to cast off your past, the sooner the better.”
On Sunday, Kotobuki and I went to our long-delayed movie.
“After we see the movie, could we…get something to eat or something?”
“Sure. To celebrate your recovery, I’ll treat you to whatever you want.”
“Y-you don’t have to do that! It’s okay…but, um…after we eat, would you go shopping with me?”
“I’ll go wherever you want,” I agreed with a smile. Kotobuki’s cheeks flushed, and she smiled happily. Both of us had been looking forward to Sunday a lot.
And as for Tohko—
“Groooooossssss!”
At the book club’s room after school, she was clinging to the back of her chair, whimpering after eating one of my improv stories.
“It was so wonderful until the ‘Aegean Sea’ appeared from inside the ‘suitcase!’ Why did the seawater turn into ‘wood gluuuuuuuue’? It’s like putting grated yam that tastes like pudding on top of a paellaaaa! My mouth is so sticky!
“You’re so mean! Awful! How could you make me lower my guard and then write a story like that! You’re so negligent in rewarding your president for doing battle with the National Center Test.”
“You got rejected for Tokyo University’s third-level science in the first round, didn’t you?”
“Urk.”
“There are limits to showing off. I don’t know how a dunce in science and math was going for third-level science of all things.”
“But I never wanted to go there ever since the anniversary test…in which case, I wanted to challenge myself with something I wouldn’t normally do.”
“Then you got rejected in the first round and couldn’t even challenge yourself.”
“I-I still have my first choice! I didn’t get rejected there!” Tohko declared tearfully.
I asked, “Then how about I write a supersweet story to cleanse your palate?”
“Mmmph, you mean it?”
Still clinging to the chair, crestfallen, Tohko looked up at me cautiously.
I looked straight back into her eyes.
Yeah, I’ll write something. If you come clean about how you found out what I wrote in my first draft.
That’s what I tried to say, but my voice wouldn’t work.
I’d asked the same question any number of times before, but Tohko wouldn’t answer and just joked, “It’s a secret. Use your imagination.”
> When I hesitated, Tohko grinned.
“I’m good for today actually. I’ll take it as a reward for passing. If I pass, you have to write me an unbelievably yummy, sweet story.”
She sat back down in her chair with an amiable smile, pulled her knees up to her chest to sit crassly with her stocking feet up on the chair, and started flipping through Hesse’s Youth, Beautiful Youth.
The western sunlight streamed through the windows, enfolding her classical profile, which was framed by her braids, in waves of a golden color like gooey honey.
“What kind of person do you want to be, Tohko?”
When I asked, her thin fingers ripped off the edge of a page as she answered, “…When I’m more sad than I know how to handle, a person who can laugh beautifully.”
I remembered how, after Miu had left the planetarium, Tohko had watched Kotobuki and me from a short distance away and smiled, and my heart skipped a beat.
Tohko had looked like she had a pure, kind smile that day…
“Mmmm, yum! Youth, Beautiful Youth tastes like coffee-flavored mousse. It’s robust and gentle, bittersweet…melancholy…”
She put the torn page in her mouth, chewed it up and swallowed, then started tearing off another page.
A treacly smile was spreading over Tohko’s lips.
The same scene as always.
The instant I thought about how I wouldn’t be able to see this gentle scene from this chair anymore after only a little bit longer, my chest squeezed tight.
Right now, we were in a moment of warm twilight.
Inside the happy, golden haze heading toward night.
Our separation was imminent.
Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation Page 22
