Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2

by Mizuki Nomura

  I’m convinced that I would stop you from growing.

  When you told me that you would never write a novel ever, I was flabbergasted. I thought I’d spoiled you and created a place you could escape to and closed off the path of writing, and it felt like my heart was cracking.

  And yet whenever you cry, I can’t help reaching out my hand again. I can’t watch over you in silence as you suffer anymore. I feel your pain as if you’re a part of me, and I do stupid things.

  Sadness and pain are both important: people grow stronger by willing themselves to stand back up after they’ve fallen, and yet you thought you could stay the same unreliable Konoha forever, that you didn’t have to write a novel.

  That’s not good.

  Nanase got angry and called me selfish.

  She came to see me the day of graduation and brought me your scarf.

  She really is such a nice girl.

  Nanase often consulted with me about you in the library. She was upset about how she got nervous whenever she saw you and ended up acting surly. Her straightforward feelings for you were so cute, they made me smile. I’ve always thought it would be nice if a girl like Nanase were your girlfriend.

  I was jealous of her.

  I still am.

  I’m sure you and Nanase could walk side by side, helping each other.

  I’m unnecessary.

  Maybe I’m wrong, like Nanase said.

  Maybe trying to pull away from you is an egotistical act.

  Even now, Alissa’s feelings aren’t clear to me.

  My dad told me to try reading Strait Is the Gate one day when I had someone I liked, and he gave me a copy.

  I read it a ton of times after I met you, Konoha.

  Why did Alissa leave Jerome even though she loved him?

  Did she have to go alone?

  Even though there was nothing standing in their way?

  Each time I turned a page, I felt Alissa’s pain and suffering as she tried to pull away, and it made my heart tremble.

  Could Alissa have been wrong—?

  However, Konoha.

  I am a book girl who lives off stories as my nourishment, and I am Fumiharu Amano’s daughter.

  I cannot do something that might jeopardize the growth of an author.

  Maybe my dad knew that Ryuto put poison into the coffee, and he let my mom drink it and then drank it himself anyway.

  Even now that doubt won’t leave my heart.

  Maybe the editor Fumiharu Amano sacrificed himself and his wife to become nourishment for the author Kanako Sakurai to write.

  To let her write the supreme novel—

  Like a transparent consommé with so many different ingredients blended together in it, even when my dad smiled with his clear eyes, you could never glimpse the deepest point in his heart. That’s the kind of person he was.

  So this is all just my “imagination,” but…

  While I fear something unforgivable, I wind up thinking that something like that might have happened. I am his daughter, after all, and I did inherit his blood.

  My dad might have done something wrong, but I wanted to become someone who protected authors and made them grow, like my father.

  I wanted to be your nourishment for writing, Konoha.

  And when I think that Alissa might have gone through the narrow gate for Jerome’s benefit, I feel like I can understand how she felt a little bit.

  That even if she was wrong, the way Alissa felt, caring about Jerome, was true.

  That for Alissa, it was “that which is superior.”

  I think that, and my heart grows lighter for just a moment. It grows pure and holy.

  The two years I spent with you, Konoha, you were definitely my author alone.

  You were the person more important to me than anything.

  I’ll never forget that.

  I’ll remember all the stories you wrote for me.

  In my letters to Aunt Kanako, partway through it stops being my mom’s words, and my own words start to mix in a lot.

  I’m still confused about things, but I’m going to go through the narrow gate.

  Please, Konoha, become an author who can shine a light on bleak truths, like you did for Aunt Kanako that day.

  I don’t have much left of Alt-Heidelberg, so instead I’ll bring your scarf.

  Good-bye.

  I’ll read your book somewhere under the same sky.

  I clenched my jaw desperately and gulped back the tears that threatened to spill over.

  I put the letter back in the envelope, stuck it inside Strait Is the Gate, put the book into my bag, and stood up.

  When I turned out the light, the interior of the clubroom was wrapped in the cold darkness of night.

  My throat almost tearing, my heart trembling, I thought fiercely.

  I would go through the narrow gate, too.

  I would move past it.

  The wide road traveled with another was a much easier journey than the narrow road traveled alone.

  If you were with someone else, you could grow strong, could support each other, wouldn’t be lonely, could transform sadness into joy.

  It was absolutely much nicer that way.

  It was so many times more joyous than going alone.

  But just as Tohko had gone alone, I, too, would go through the narrow gate and walk its narrow path alone.

  The narrow gate isn’t a gate for those who are chosen to go through. It’s a gate that you find with your own eyes, steady yourself, and then walk through.

  No matter how dark or cold or lonely or trying the road that leads from there might be, I had to become strong on my own and not with another.

  Yes, I would become stronger.

  I would steady myself.

  I would go alone.

  I would reach it alone.

  Because I had grown full on the strength, the imagination, the stories for that from the book girl.

  I went down the hall, descended the stairs, and went through the front entrance and out of the school building.

  The warm golden backdrop had disappeared and there was no sign of a girl with braids. Only the dark night opened before me.

  When I had walked my way alone through this night, I knew I could see her again.

  After all, Tohko hadn’t taken the scarf with her.

  That was because she believed we would meet again.

  My love began at the time of our parting.

  After becoming a third-year, I found out that the painting of Tohko was decorating the workroom in the music hall.

  In the picture, Tohko has one of her braids undone, and she’s wrapped in the golden light of sunset with a white lace curtain coiled around her naked body, next to a window, reading a book.

  On her face is the smile like a violet that I always saw in that tiny room.

  As if she were watching over me from there.

  But for now, moving through the school yard at night toward the gate, I still didn’t know about the painting.

  I wasn’t going to cry anymore.

  From now on I would hide my sadness and smile like a mime.

  Even if at times I was as famished as a spirit, at times made the decisions of a fool, was as covered in disgrace as a corrupted angel, I would hold the moon and flowers in my breast and continue walking like a wayfarer going to the holy land.

  Then I would become a scribe who faced God.

  An author who fixed their eyes on the truth, shone the light of imagination on it, and created a new world.

  I went through the gate, then walked off in the opposite direction than Tohko had gone.

  Epilogue—Book Girl

  Six years went by without seeing each other.

  “Inoue!”

  Kotobuki raised her hand to signal to me in the lobby of the airport. She was wearing a strawberry-pink short-sleeved sweater with a white skirt.

  “Thanks for coming, Inoue.”

  “No problem. Looks like I’m late, though. Sorry.” />
  “Are you busy with work?”

  “I’m doing all right. Thanks for asking.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ve been seeing your books everywhere in magazine ads and bookstores.”

  I found myself unexpectedly captivated by her smile, which seemed to brighten the atmosphere. She’d been beautiful even in high school, but after going out into the world, it looked like she’d improved even further.

  After graduating college, Kotobuki had started working at an office. She was taking a break for summer vacation today, going to Paris. To go see a performance by an opera singer who’d made a dramatic revival last year and was now widely talked about.

  “It’d be great if you could see Omi, huh?”

  “Yeah… but even if I can’t talk to him, I’ll be happy just being able to hear him sing,” she murmured in a gentle voice. “I think Yuka would have enjoyed it, too.”

  Even now when Christmas came around, she still got a message from her best friend who’d passed away.

  There was no question that he was the one sending them for Mito.

  “I’ll go see it, too, the next time they have a public performance.”

  “Thanks for coming all this way to see me off today.”

  She said this with a bright expression, then gazed at me mildly.

  “… Do you remember… how I told you that I read Strait Is the Gate the day Tohko graduated? I meant it as a declaration that I would always love you. That Juliette married someone else for Jerome and Alissa’s sakes, but even if I wasn’t your girlfriend anymore, I would still care about you. I went through ‘the narrow gate’ then, too.”

  A sunny smile spread over Kotobuki’s face.

  “I’m over it now, after all, but I’m glad that I kept caring for you.”

  “Thanks. You were too good for me as a girlfriend.”

  When I said that, she murmured shyly, “Don’t be stupid,” then waved and walked toward her departure gate.

  I left the airport.

  The sky was an almost blinding blue and the summer sun beat down on the asphalt.

  As I headed to the station, it struck me anew that six years had gone by since that graduation ceremony.

  After that day, Maki had safely given birth to a son. The boy, named Haruto, would be in elementary school next year. His face was like Ryuto’s, but inside he was the exact duplicate of Maki, so Ryuto would lament that “He preaches to me and I can’t stand it. He’s such an uppity kid.” Although Maki had come back sharply, “You do whatever you want and you don’t work, so even your son worries about you.”

  Maki and Ryuto were both so fond of Haruto that it seemed he could do no wrong.

  Maki got married three years ago.

  When I found out who her husband was, I was floored.

  He was the president of a trade company and he was way older than her. He had even been divorced and there were all sorts of nasty rumors about him. Everyone was even more against it and up in arms than when she’d given birth to Haruto.

  But Maki’s marriage happened right away. The daughter she had with him is three this year and her name is Hotaru. Of course, Maki gave this child her profound love, too.

  Akutagawa took the civil servant exam and got a job with the government, and Miu got a job in the welfare field and spends her days interacting with children.

  Ryuto was, as Maki said, suddenly going off on trips or getting part-time work at shady detective agencies, doing whatever he felt like.

  Takeda had become a middle school teacher of all things. She made out with Ryuto so much that it embarrassed me.

  Kanako won a literary prize in another country, and her reputation as an author had risen even further.

  Her work titled A Day for Yui had been a sweetly kind—a sacred—story, the complete opposite of the things she’d written until then.

  Occasionally I would hear about Tohko from Ryuto or Takeda.

  How she’d graduated from college.

  How her dissertation had been on Ogai Mori.

  How she was working here.

  But I never saw her once.

  I went home to the apartment where I lived alone and booted up the computer in my study.

  The day that Tohko had returned the manuscript I’d written for her and told me she couldn’t eat it, I’d taken it and gone to see Mr. Sasaki.

  That manuscript, with a parting scene added at the end and finalized, was published as Miu Inoue’s second book when I was a third-year in high school, and it became a best seller.

  Just like with the first book, lots of people came to me about TV shows or a movie, but I turned them all down.

  Because not just anyone could reproduce that smile like a violet, those clear eyes, that kind voice.

  I wanted the people who read my book to picture their own book girl in their own hearts.

  Requests for work come in without much interruption, although none of them are the explosive successes that my first book Like the Open Sky and my second book Book Girl were.

  Ever since that day I decided to walk alone, I’ve kept writing.

  “Konoha, your tea is ready.”

  I opened the door and Maika stuck her face in.

  My little sister was in middle school now, and she would frequently come by my apartment because she wanted to help me out.

  Apparently she thought it was fun to make meals and do laundry because Mom did everything for her at home.

  Maika’s possessions increased steadily at my apartment. Once summer break started, we were halfway living together, and I even had friends who teased, “Just get married already,” so it was kind of a pain. I told ’em she was my little sister and everything.

  The sweet aroma of lemon meringue pie wafted through the door.

  “C’mon already, Konoha. Konoha—what are you doing?!”

  Maika’s eyes went wide.

  I came out of my room wearing a white scarf around my neck.

  “Why are you wearing a scarf? It’s summertime!”

  “Because it’s summertime.”

  I went past Maika and onto the landing outside my front door. When I stuck a stuffed bear wearing a Santa suit onto the wall beside the door with a thumbtack, Maika’s eyes became even more shocked.

  “What’s with that bear? He’s dressed like Santa and he’s got a fish in his mouth! Did you draw this fish, Konoha? Why a Santa in the summer? Why a fish?”

  “Does it look like a salmon?”

  “A salmon?! Why does he have a salmon in his mouth? And why are you hanging it up right there? Is it some kind of good luck charm? Did you get stuck on a manuscript and go funny in the head?”

  “What a mean thing to say. I’m on schedule.”

  “But if you hang up that bear and wear that scarf when the new manager is coming over, they’ll think Miu Inoue is a weirdo.”

  “That’s fine.”

  I smiled for her.

  “Because the new editor is a total weirdo, too.”

  “Do you know them?”

  “Yeah. You do, too.”

  “What?”

  The Santa bear that Tohko had given me on Christmas Eve was looking at us, a salmon in his mouth.

  I won’t forget.

  You’ve been in my heart all along.

  The man of destiny is waiting for her, wearing a white scarf, in front of a bear with a salmon in its mouth.

  She would come through that door any second.

  The bell rang.

  Maika ran to the room where the intercom was.

  “See, now the manager’s here! Take the bear down and take off that scarf quick! Inoue residence. Sorry to keep you waiting. Right. Okay. We’ve been expecting you. I’m unlocking it now.”

  The sound of the elevator climbing.

  The sound of its doors opening to either side.

  The sound of light footsteps approaching.

  I closed my eyes and listened closely with a joyous feeling.

  And then the bell rang, and I opened my eyes
and turned the doorknob.

  Afterword

  Hello, Mizuki Nomura here.

  The Book Girl series has found its way to the conclusion.

  The inspiration, in a continuation from the first volume, is Gide’s Strait Is the Gate. Gide called this work a “recit” (or story) and he broke it into “romans” (or novels). I wanted to give some attention to this facet, but I wasn’t able to touch on it in this volume.

  Also, it would be correct to say that the “scribe” of the title is a “novelist,” so since the author here includes the sense of “novelist,” I went with “scribe.” I hope you understand.

  The diary I used in the story was utterly oppressive from the very first page. Gide left behind a huge number of letters and diaries, but I was shocked plenty of times and thought, Should you really be writing about that?! I couldn’t tell how much was true, and as he toyed with my expectations, I got sucked in.

  If he’d lived in modern times, I’m convinced he would keep a shocking diary of every detail on his blog.

  I absolutely recommend those interested read it. It’s the kind of thing that can change your values.

  Now, at the very end, even unreliable Konoha was brave like a main character.

  Tohko and Nanase each made their own decisions, too. Even if something painful happens, every kid can be happy. Because the thing that comes after the end is a beginning!

  But for right now, I’m indulging in the lingering impression of an ending.

  Thank you to everyone who’s read this far.

  When we met up, my manager would always bring me a fat stack of questionnaire postcards and reading them made me feel excited and embarrassed and all sorts of other things.

  And a deep thank-you to those who wrote me letters and to those who talked about Book Girl on their websites. Every time I hear someone’s beautiful thoughts, it encourages me.

  At first, although I planned it out furiously, I was worried out of my mind about whether I could write these stories with my current skill level. As expected, every volume was an exercise in revision, revision, revision. All I can do is bow my head to my manager, who would engage me in long meetings every time.