Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2

by Mizuki Nomura

  I made a faltering excuse and left the hospital.

  As I walked, head bent, down the tree-lined path while sunset closed in, my heart raced as if threatening to tear itself apart.

  Tohko had told me that the morning the Amanos died, Yui and Ryuto had eaten normal food and Fumiharu and Tohko had eaten a “meal” that Yui wrote for them.

  That Fumiharu and Yui had drunk coffee that Fumiharu had brewed.

  How had I overlooked something this important?

  If that was the only thing they’d both consumed, that would mean the poison had been added to the coffee. The one who’d brewed the coffee was Fumiharu.

  Which meant, the one who’d poisoned them was—!

  The core of my brain was on fire.

  Ryuto’s words echoed disturbingly in my ears.

  “Konoha, there’s some things… you’re better off not knowin’. And once you find out… you can’t go back.”

  Why had Ryuto been in such despair? Was it because he’d found out it wasn’t Yui or Kanako who’d poisoned the Amanos, but Fumiharu?

  The ambiguous, dreamlike scene Ryuto had talked about drunkenly.

  “She stuck a spoon into the coffeepot and swirled it around… and the silver dust spun in a smooth circle, dissolvin’ into it.”

  “… When I tried to help her put it in the cups, she told me I was too little and I might hurt myself. Then she picked up the coffeepot and poured it into some cups with flowers on them. That’s when the earth cracked open and turned dark.”

  Hadn’t Ryuto been watching Fumiharu brew the coffee, at his side?

  It may well have been Yui who’d hidden the poison in the heart-shaped violet bottle in her jewelry box. And maybe, like Ryuto had said, the one who’d given it to her was Takumi Suwa, who’d died in a car accident.

  But the one who’d brought the coffee to her was Fumiharu. Could Ryuto have convinced himself in the confusion of memory that the one who’d brewed the coffee and the one who’d poured the coffee were both Yui?

  And yet he’d realized.

  That Fumiharu was the one who’d ended it all—

  “… Someone points at a shelf—and they tell me. The sleepin’ powder of Ole Lukøje is up there—”

  As Ryuto pointed into the distance with a shaking finger, Fumiharu’s face, which I’d only ever seen in photographs, overlapped with his. A gentle smile—

  I didn’t know what it was in the Christmas photo that had given Ryuto such a shock. Or what he’d been searching for after.

  But if Fumiharu had had an affair with Kanako and Yui had suffered because of it—what if Fumiharu had known that Yui had poison? What if Fumiharu had been beset with guilt and used it?

  What if the one who’d planned the murder-suicide was Fumiharu and not Yui—?

  Just like in the novel Kanako wrote, fantasy and reality mixed together chaotically in my mind. A variety of emotions intertwined, eddied together murkily, and I could almost but not quite glimpse the truth.

  None of it was more than conjecture.

  As I walked quickly, panting, I pulled up Ryuto’s number on my cell phone and called him.

  I got his voice mail again.

  “This is Inoue. There’s something I want to talk to you about in person. Could you give me a call?”

  And then I headed for a place Ryuto frequented.

  I wonder what would happen to Fumiharu if he took poison. Would he die? Or, since he’s different from us, would he be fine?

  When we were all eating together at home, I asked that because my heart had reached its absolute limit.

  “I have the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje. I would hate it if I was the only one who went to sleep and Fumiharu was the only one who stayed awake if we took the medicine together.”

  I said it as a joke, but I prayed for it to be that way.

  I wanted to sleep eternally and let Fumiharu be free.

  That day, you glared at me with a pinched-up face, Kana, and Fumiharu answered with a laugh.

  “I guess I won’t know until I have some. Though I think as a living creature we should have a certain amount in common as far as poisons and medicines go. But for myself, I would hate for my end to come dying from poison someone fed me. If I’m going to die anyway, I want to die for something more important.”

  “Like what?”

  “I live with the writings of authors as my nourishment. So I want to give something back.

  “I want to become the nourishment for an author’s writings. That’s why I chose to be an editor.

  “If I were to die, I would want that death, too, to be the nourishment of someone’s writing. When I die, would you write about it for me, Kanako?”

  Fumiharu’s eyes were gentle and dreamy.

  You told him irritably, “Don’t talk about such stupid things!”

  Even so… you probably will write about it.

  You would write about our deaths, if we were to die.

  After I got to the restaurant, I left my second message on Ryuto’s voice mail. Telling him that I was at Harumi’s restaurant and I wanted him to come.

  When Harumi brought over the milk tea I’d ordered, she was worried about Ryuto, too.

  “Ryuto’s been acting funny lately. He’s always had this quality like a big, unruly kid, but his mood swings have been especially bad lately. I wonder what happened to him.”

  I called my mom to tell her I didn’t need dinner and stayed at the restaurant until nearly nine.

  During the day it was a fast-food restaurant, but at night it turned into a bar and the number of customers coming to drink increased steadily, so I was forced to leave.

  As I walked alongside the roadway illuminated by neon lights, I was trying to call Ryuto again when—

  I caught sight of Ryuto himself right in front of me.

  A shiver went down my spine.

  He looked even more wasted, like his mental balance had crumbled even further than when I’d seen him on Saturday night. He looked tormented by suffering, as if he’d abandoned everything, just like Kurosaki had at Amemiya’s funeral. He looked like a ghost, wandering aimlessly. His steps were light and unsteady, and he didn’t seem to know where he was, or even where it was he was trying to go.

  “Ryuto!”

  When I ran up to him, he looked down at me with languid eyes.

  Had he not showered this entire time? He stank of sweat.

  “… Konoha.”

  “Great, so you got my messages?”

  “… Messages?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “… I threw my phone away.”

  A lump stuck in my throat.

  Ryuto’s voice was incredibly hoarse, his panting breaths were uneven, and his bloodshot eyes never focused on anything. Deep in his black eyes, maddening pain and despair flickered like a fluorescent light being shut off.

  “No one… is willing to kill me. They all say they love me or they adore me or whatever, but when I ask them to kill me, they get all scared and run away.”

  He took several shallow breaths as he murmured indifferently, but I shuddered.

  “My kid… is gonna be born in the fall, y’know. If I die now, I wonder if I could get reborn inside that kid. Get born from Maki’s body. Call my own mom ‘Maki.’ Do the whole thing over again.”

  Cold sweat ran down my spine. There was no end to the electric charge, as if blades were running along the back of my neck.

  Ryuto’s eyes… shot… to the road, and he whispered, “I see a cat.”

  A car with its headlights on was screaming toward us. I didn’t see anything that looked like a cat, and I didn’t hear one, either.

  “What are you talking about, Ryuto?”

  Ryuto had his eyes fixed on the road.

  “See it? Over there. There’s a black cat in the middle of the road mewing…”

  Takumi Suwa was hit by a car trying to protect a cat—Maki’s words came back to me and my heart went cold.

  I didn’t think he
saw a cat, but did he think that he could?!

  Like a sleepwalker, Ryuto started to take unsteady steps toward the road.

  “Wait! There isn’t any cat, Ryuto!!”

  My shout was erased by the sound of an engine. Ryuto wasn’t stopping. He just kept going.

  I reached out a hand and was trying to grab his shirt when—

  “Ryu.”

  A cheerful voice called his name.

  Takeda was standing in front of Ryuto wearing a milk-colored coat. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and she was looking up at him with an adorable, puppylike expression.

  Everything after that was like a slow-motion scene on TV.

  The corners of her mouth still curved into a smile, Takeda drew closer.

  With a glint, a knife appeared from behind her back.

  And with it

  She stabbed him.

  Deeply—into Ryuto’s chest!

  The knife she held was the folding knife that Kotobuki had tossed aside in the underground storage room.

  He’d been trying to leap into the road, and she stabbed him, as if to bind him to this place, to drive a wedge into him to hold him back!

  He couldn’t believe it. That’s how it looked when he opened his eyes wide and looked down at her.

  Takeda gripped the knife she’d plunged into his chest firmly in both hands and smiled brightly, her eyes syrupy.

  It was a kind, sweet smile.

  Ryuto’s eyes crinkled as well.

  The corners of his mouth pulled into a wisp of a smile, and his expression grew peaceful and fulfilled, as if this was the happiest moment he’d ever lived.

  The sounds around us grew distant.

  Any number of cars drove past the two of them.

  Ryuto reached out an arm and pulled Takeda close. He put his cheek against her fluffy hair, breathed in the scent of it, and for one moment his eyes looked pained, on the verge of tears. Then he smiled again slightly and closed his eyes, as if he was being called into the most blissful rest.

  Ryuto collapsing against Takeda…

  Takeda crouching in the road with Ryuto circled in her arms…

  Her face transforming into emptiness like a doll’s…

  The blood seeping from Ryuto’s chest spreading steadily over the sidewalk and passersby screaming—

  I watched the entire tragedy, all of the love happening right in front of me, in mute shock.

  I don’t want to make anyone write anymore.

  But there are people whose destiny it is to write.

  People who must continue to write, taking hatred, suffering, sadness, death and the loss of people important to them—even topics like that as their nourishment.

  People who try to reach the pinnacle known as God by doing so.

  Is it a curse? Is it a blessing?

  Kana.

  What can I do for you?

  If I was to disappear completely from this world, would you love Tohko and Ryu?

  Would you be happy with Fumiharu for me?

  I lose in the gamble.

  I’m sorry that you suffered for such a long time.

  Good-bye.

  Chapter 7—To the Person I Love Most

  Ryuto was taken to the hospital in extremely serious condition and went into emergency surgery.

  Takeda was sitting on a chair in the lobby, her expression vacant. I tried to talk to her, but she never responded. In the ambulance she’d murmured, “I wanted… to give Ryu the thing he wanted most.”

  Maki rushed to the hospital and yelled, “How stupid could he be?!” her face twisted. She bit down hard on her lip and irritation and panic showed in her eyes, but she was issuing orders over every last detail to Takamizawa, and she told me to go find Tohko.

  “Leave this part to me and bring Tohko here! I am not going to let this kid follow Ryuto into suicide, so go now.”

  Even when Maki said that right in front of her, Takeda didn’t offer the slightest reaction, which gave me a stabbing sense of unease. But I headed for the Sakurai house in a car that belonged to Maki’s family.

  When I’d called from the hospital, nobody had picked up, but there were lights on in the window.

  I went as far as the front door; then when I was reaching for the doorbell, the door abruptly slid open and Tohko came out looking harried, carrying a pale violet-colored box in her arms.

  “Aunt Kanako!” she shouted, and then her face tensed and she became flustered. “I-I’m sorry. I heard a car stop so I thought it was Aunt Kanako… What’s going on, Konoha?”

  “Takeda stabbed Ryuto and he’s seriously hurt!”

  When I told her that, her eyes grew wide and the box fell from her hands.

  It made a thud and sky-blue and rosy scraps of paper scattered out the door, were caught in the wind, and blew around.

  Were these the letters I’d seen before?! Why were they torn into such tiny pieces?

  Tohko’s knees buckled. Her face was pale. She picked up one scrap of paper and whispered feebly, “… I have to get Aunt Kanako.”

  The next instant, she stood up with a look of determination.

  “Hold on,” she said hurriedly, withdrew inside, and then immediately returned.

  While we were heading to Kanako’s office in the car, Tohko kept her head bent, brooding.

  “She might not see me. She might never forgive me. She read the letters…”

  She wasn’t talking to me. It was as if she was confounded inside herself and suffering. She would look down at the scrap of the letter she clutched in her hand again and again, then bite her lip.

  I tried to cheer her up by telling her we’d left a message on Kanako’s answering machine, so she might be on her way to the hospital by now, but Tohko shook her head.

  “No, she won’t go,” she whispered in a hard voice, staring fixedly at her knees. “There’s only ever been one person who’s important to Aunt Kanako. Since that person’s gone, she’s not going to love anyone ever again.”

  Was that person Fumiharu?

  “But this time—this time I have to bring her. Otherwise she and Ryuto will be beyond help forever.”

  As soon as the car stopped in front of the apartment, Tohko opened the door and rushed out.

  We climbed the stairs, and when she reached the outside of Kanako’s apartment, she plastered herself against the door and rang the bell.

  “Aunt Kanako, open up! It’s Tohko! I know you’re in there!”

  There was no response.

  Tohko’s face twisted in pain; then she pulled a key out of her pocket and put it in the door.

  A copy? It must have taken guts to use that. Kanako would definitely get upset. Even I could picture it. Even so, Tohko set her jaw, turned the key, and opened the door.

  She took off her shoes and went deeper inside. I followed after her.

  I could hear the clack-clack of typing on a keyboard from ahead. Something squeezed tight somewhere around the pit of my stomach, and it became difficult to breathe.

  Kanako was facing a computer with a chilly expression. Even when Tohko called to her, her slender fingers continued moving, and she didn’t so much as turn her eyes.

  “I’m sorry I let myself in. Ryuto’s in the hospital. They said he was stabbed in the chest and he’s unconscious. Please—come with us to the hospital!”

  Tohko shouted desperately. Her staring eyes and her loud voice were both spilling over with gut-wrenching pain.

  But Kanako faced the screen, her gaze never shifting. Unable to stand it, I yelled, too.

  “Please, Kanako! Ryuto is really in trouble!”

  Kanako opened her mouth for the first time. Without shifting her eyes, she informed me coldly, “I have a manuscript I have to finish by tomorrow. You’re bothering me. Go home, Inoue.”

  She was determined not to hear anything Tohko said. Her staunch, absolute refusal sent a chill down my spine.

  Even at a time like this, this woman—

  Tohko stared at Kanako, her face
twisted with pain, and she begged, “Aunt Kanako… Ryuto is dying.”

  “It won’t save him if I go, will it, Inoue? People die when it’s their time, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  What a horrible person! What an absolutely awful person!

  I didn’t know if the thing welling up in me was anger or fear or despair.

  “Aunt Kanako, you’re Ryuto’s mother…”

  “… Ryuto doesn’t think of me as a mother,” Kanako murmured as if to herself, to no one in particular.

  “You’re wrong! Ryuto has always wanted you to smile at him and hug him!”

  “… When he was little, that boy was glued to Yui far more than he ever was to me. Even when I was home, he never came near me.”

  “That’s… that’s because you kept him at a distance! Because you told him he couldn’t even call you mom! So he never got attention from you. But he wanted to call you mom. When he was little, he would tell me, ‘It’s so cool how you can call Aunt Yui mom.’ ”

  The cold clatter of typing filled the room.

  Even though the person she was talking to was right in front of her, Tohko’s words rolled off Kanako’s back like she existed in another dimension. She couldn’t even acknowledge her presence.

  Desperately holding herself up on legs that threatened to fail, Tohko was no longer the book girl who fixed her wise eyes on the truth and gently read out its story; she was just a powerless girl. Sadness surged up in me at how hoarse her voice was. It sounded like it might break.

  “Ryuto loved his mother more than anyone! He wanted her to love him!”

  Her voice shot straight into my heart.

  The person Ryuto loved most.

  The person at a distance whom he had adored since childhood, whom he could never have.

  In that instant, I knew who it was!

  Knew who Maki’s arrogant gaze; who Takeda and Amemiya’s vacant, unseeing faces mirrored; who it was they had resembled—!

  A stream of words and images streaked through my mind.

  The photos in the album that had fallen out of the closet, the two girls standing in front of an art museum in the woods, the violet barrette, the cold eyes, Ryuto pointing and saying, “Ole Lukøje’s sleeping powder is up there, the silver dust pouring out like sand.” What Mr. Sasaki had said, what Ryuto had said, what Tohko had said, what we’d heard the nurse at the hospital say—