Book Girl and the Famished Spirit

by Mizuki Nomura

  “You wrote each other letters? But you were in the same room.”

  “Yes, we did. We used a secret code that we made up. You can still see it on the wall.”

  Her mother pointed at the wall, where a great many numbers were written.

  They were like a magic spell, and she pored over each one, whispering them to herself.

  “17, 28, 18, 21, 2, 5, 4, 23, 9, 28, 10, 5, 28, 1, 28, 1, 28, 18, 21, 2, 5, 4, 23, 9, 28, 10, 5, 28, 17—10, 5, 23, 21, 10, 24, 21, 8, 28, 22, 5, 8, 21, 12, 21, 8—… What do they mean?”

  Her mother chuckled.

  “I won’t tell even you that. It’s the secret I share with him. Mommy left a lot of codes at school, too. Maybe if that little boy comes back someday, he’ll see Mommy’s messages.”

  “Did he go somewhere?”

  “Yes, Mommy made him mad and he went far away, and I don’t know when he’ll come back…”

  Her mother spoke sadly and hugged her tightly. Her shoulders trembled and she seemed to be crying, so the girl asked her nothing more about him.

  After a while her mother raised her face and stroked the girl’s hair; then she smiled at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  “All right, I’ll read you a book. It’s called The Day Boy and the Night Girl. The little boy and I liked this book very much.”

  Who had this boy been that had made her mother so sad?

  If they were such good friends, where had he gone?

  One day her mother whispered that she had a secret and showed her a few photographs.

  One was of a young boy a little older than herself with light brown hair and eyes like smoky quartz with a slight bluish cast. And then the boy in another one, a little older now, dressed in a middle school uniform.

  “Doesn’t he have pretty eyes?”

  She thought the boy’s eyes looked very lonely.

  And sad, like a stray cat with no friends.

  She was sure that he must have loved her mother.

  Something in her heart wavered.

  It was a puzzling emotion, forlorn and secret like the beating of a waterbird’s wings.

  Her father was a kind, peaceful man. Her aunt was beautiful and refined.

  They both loved her with all their hearts and showered her with their affection like clear water.

  “You look so much like your mother. Your eyes are exactly the same.”

  “Yes, your mouth and nose both come from her side. You’re going to be very beautiful when you grow up, just like she was.”

  “I’m so proud: My little girl is starting middle school. The uniform suits you. It reminds me of when I first met your mother.”

  “I remember how you fell in love with Kayano the very first time you saw her.”

  “It’s all right. I have these episodes all the time. I’ll be able to leave the hospital soon. How could I die before I’ve seen you on your wedding day? Your mother was beautiful in her wedding dress. I was so happy when I married her, I thought I might float up into the sky. I’m sure a white dress and veil will suit you just as well.”

  “Let me stand in for your mother when the time comes. Okay? Promise your old aunt that.”

  “Dinner is ready, miss! You eat up now.”

  “Thank you!”

  “How is it, miss?”

  “It’s very good!”

  “I’m glad. There’s plenty left for seconds.”

  The loving gazes of her father and aunt.

  The kind housekeeper who cooked so well.

  The house she grew up in was as warm and unsullied as heaven must be, and her favorite flowers bloomed everywhere in the garden. The wind was gentle and the colorful green leaves of the trees never blew away.

  She knew that he would have brought a storm to this paradise, would have shaken the trees and plucked apart all the flowers.

  So she kept him a secret from her father and her aunt and the kind housekeeper.

  She never opened her sketchbook in the house.

  His injuries must have still hurt. Ryuto sprawled out in the backseat of Maki’s car, wearing a shirt and pants over the bandages that circled his stomach. He was breathing raggedly.

  “Nngh—”

  Tohko, Ryuto, Maki, and I were going to Amemiya’s house.

  It had grown impenetrably dark outside, and lights flashed in the windows of the car before disappearing.

  After Maki admitted to giving Amemiya advice, we had all gone to the hospital where Ryuto was being treated.

  Ryuto was in a hospital bed, shouting to be let out. When Tohko saw him, her tension dissolved. She broke down and scrunched up her face as tears welled in her eyes.

  Then she walked up to Ryuto, who was staring at her wide-eyed, and whacked him hard on the head with her fist.

  “How can you keep making us worry like this all the time?! Your luck isn’t going to save you forever, you know!”

  “Owww. But no, I need to get to Hotaru. She’s trying to get revenge on Kurosaki. I have to stop her!”

  In the car, Ryuto told us everything that had happened, letting out a groan every so often, his face twisted in agony.

  The day Ryuto and I went to Amemiya’s house, Ryuto had held Amemiya while she sobbed, but I couldn’t bear to watch them. After I’d left the estate, Ryuto had urged her to come to his house.

  You shouldn’t stay here. I’ll find a place you can live without being scared. Until then, you should stay at my house. My dad’s gone, so it’s just my mom and big sister, and Mom doesn’t care what I do.

  “But she got spooked suddenly and pushed me away, and then she started cryin’. She was shakin’ real bad, but she said she couldn’t just leave the house like that without tellin’ anyone. Then she got real worked up and seemed confused. She started babbling about how a ghost was going to come, how she wasn’t supposed to eat anythin’, how she was a ghost, how she’d made a promise to her mom so she had to keep it a secret, how she wasn’t her mom… All kinds of stuff.”

  Ryuto’s forehead knit in pain and he groaned. His breathing seemed labored, and he repeatedly sucked in a breath and then hissed it out again, almost panting.

  Tohko watched him, her heart breaking.

  “Nngh… Durin’ all that, she blurted out that she was gonna get revenge on Kurosaki and that since she’d turned sixteen, she could do it. She said Maki was helpin’ her… Hey, are you the same Maki who told Hotaru that she could get married once she turned sixteen and then Kurosaki wouldn’t be her guardian anymore?”

  His eyes clouded with sweat, Ryuto glared bitterly at Maki. Maki regarded her reflection in the windshield with a languid expression. Without turning back to look at him, she replied.

  “Yes. I told her that. I said if she was interested, I would find someone for her in the Himekura family. She’s so rich there would be plenty of guys interested in becoming her husband. Of course, I wouldn’t let her do or say anything to Kurosaki. I told her I would protect her and her husband with the prestige of the Himekuras.”

  Why had Maki told Amemiya that?

  Why would she ally with Amemiya in the first place? How long had she been involved in this situation?

  I had a ton of questions, but then when the others started talking about Amemiya getting married, I listened intently so I wouldn’t miss a word they said.

  “Yeah, Hotaru mentioned that. She said even Kurosaki couldn’t lay a hand on you. She told me there was no other way for her to be free of him and that it would be her revenge on him.

  “I shook her and told her to forget about gettin’ married. I told her I would protect her, but Hotaru wouldn’t listen and she tried to leave. I tried to stop her, and then she… grabbed a piece of broken dish off the floor and stabbed me in the stomach.

  “She… apologized when she did it. But not just once. Tears were streamin’ down her face while she apologized, stabbin’ me over and over… Even when I fell to my knees and collapsed on the floor, she kept stabbin’ me. Like she was possessed.”

  I could picture
the scene vividly. My throat tightened, and my hair stood on end.

  Frail, subdued Amemiya, tears pouring from her eyes as she swung a piece of broken dish over her head and brought it down again and again into Ryuto’s stomach as red seeped across it. I couldn’t hold back a shudder.

  “… I was right when I guessed she was a dangerous woman. The worst part is that she didn’t gut me because of how she felt about me. Nngh—if she’d stabbed me because she was truly in love with me, then I would have welcomed my death.”

  Ryuto smiled bitterly. A moment later, Tohko was yanking on his ear.

  “Don’t talk like that! You got off lucky to walk away from getting stabbed that viciously!”

  “Owww, Tohko! I’m hurt. Can’t you restrain yourself a little?”

  “Since when do you care?!” Tohko pouted, tears welling in her eyes again.

  Luckily the shard Amemiya picked up had been a small one, so none of Ryuto’s injuries were life threatening, and when Maki and the others ran in, they had taken him to the hospital.

  “Amemiya called me, actually. She told me she’d killed Ryuto and asked me what she should do. She sounded detached. She’s psychologically unbalanced, so she’s in a dangerous state right now. She told me she was starting to forget where and who she was. She couldn’t even remember her name. This is the first time she’s ever stabbed someone, though. It caught me off guard.

  “So I had her watched, so something like that wouldn’t happen again. I wanted to move her to an apartment where I could keep an eye on her, but she said she didn’t want to leave that house. And just as I feared, this time she locked you two in the basement and tried to incinerate you.”

  Tohko wasn’t surprised; perhaps she’d already dreamed up that possibility. And at this point, I understood that Amemiya was probably capable of pulling off something like that.

  Because Amemiya also had the strong and uninhibited Kayano Kujo inside her, who I had met in the chemistry lab.

  Maki related the facts in a detached tone.

  “As you’ve surmised, Tamotsu Kurosaki is Aoi Kunieda, the boy who lived in Kayano’s home. He died abroad, but he made some money getting mixed up in dirty business, so he bought a new identity and came back to Japan.”

  Kurosaki’s objective had been getting revenge against Kayano for tossing him aside, but Kayano had already passed away by then so he fixed his sights on her daughter, Amemiya.

  The disappointment of losing the woman he loved and despised in equal measure, who had been the other half of his soul, must have driven him into a tempest of madness.

  Imagining how he must have felt made my brain burn.

  He had sold his soul to the devil and sent time flowing backward.

  He acquired the house he and Kayano had once lived in and readied the basement room, had decorated it as it had once been and re-created their secret room, and even managed to bring Kayano back to life.

  He made her daughter, who so resembled her, a proxy and taught her her mother’s speech, expressions, and manner, crafting her into the very image of Kayano.

  In that basement room, Amemiya was forced to play the part of her mother against her will. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be fed. The only thing Amemiya could do in that place was to live as Kayano Kujo.

  Amemiya must have been the one to draw red X’s over Kayano’s photos.

  What emotions must have driven her to painstakingly draw an X over her mother’s face in each photo?

  What emotions had driven her to write the notes and leave them in our mailbox?

  help

  hate you

  stay away

  a ghost

  In the hopelessness of her situation, Amemiya had slowly lost her mind. She began to assume the role of Kayano Kujo even when she left the house. It must have felt like Kayano had taken over her body.

  Wouldn’t she become Kayano completely one day, and Hotaru would disappear?

  Even if she feared that, there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her extreme hunger and suffering blurred the boundary between reality and fantasy, and in her eyes, Tohko and I had seemed to be the spirits of Kayano and Aoi returned from the grave. That was why she had shut us in the basement and tried to set us on fire.

  As she listened to Maki’s story, Tohko hugged herself and shuddered.

  I, too, bit down on my lip and squeezed my eyes closed.

  I was dizzy; I felt like I was on the verge of collapsing.

  Tamotsu Kurosaki had done something truly awful.

  He wanted to go back to the past and do it all over again. I had wished for that once, too. I had sworn that if I could get Miu back, I would do anything—even sell my soul to the devil.

  But to do it, Kurosaki had stolen a girl’s future and erased her personality.

  Even though that still wouldn’t bring the real Kayano back. Even though it helped no one.

  With some difficulty, Tohko murmured, “Tell me one more thing, Maki. Did Kurosaki collect those books that were down in the basement?”

  “… I don’t know. But I heard they used to belong to Kayano.”

  “I see…”

  Tohko’s eyelashes drooped, and she fell into a reverie, pressing an index finger to her lips. That was a habit Tohko had while reading—something she did when she was utterly absorbed in her interior world.

  Ryuto glared at Maki, a look brimming with animosity usually reserved for a team of villains.

  “What were you plannin’ by keepin’ me under surveillance and stoppin’ me from seein’ Hotaru? Huh, Maki? What were you tryin’ to make Hotaru do?”

  Tohko looked up and turned an uneasy gaze on Maki.

  Maki looked back at Ryuto haughtily, and when she spoke, her voice was hard.

  “The reason I didn’t take you out of the hospital was because I didn’t want you to interfere with her. I only gave her advice, only gave her what help she asked of me. I’ve never once manipulated what she wants.”

  Then Maki’s eyes filled with gloom and she murmured, “There isn’t much time left between her and Kurosaki. Kurosaki had already made his decision, so she had to act, too. Whatever effect it had on her, she had to bring things to an end with Kurosaki.”

  Anxiety shot through my heart.

  The last time I’d seen her in the chemistry lab, Kayano had said something similar.

  If half of your soul has committed a sin and been cast into hell, isn’t that the duty of the half that’s left behind? It would be wrong for only one part to be saved and go to heaven.

  What was Amemiya planning?

  What did Maki mean, there wasn’t much time left between them? Saeko, the girl who worked at Kurosaki’s company, had told us that Kurosaki was throwing up his food. Could he be seriously ill? Was that why I’d seen Amemiya at the hospital? She wasn’t planning to commit suicide with him, was she?

  Ryuto growled.

  “Where is she?! Where are we goin’?!”

  Maki answered with a grim look, “The church. She’s having the ceremony there next week.”

  “I have wonderful news. I want you to congratulate me and really mean it. I’m marrying Takashi.”

  She had smiled brightly that day while she ripped his heart into pieces.

  “Why are you upset? Aren’t you going to be happy for me? If I married you, I couldn’t live in a white mansion with a pool or ride in limousines or keep a Yorkshire terrier as a pet, could I?”

  Why? Why was she marrying another man? Was she telling me to be happy about that? Why was she smiling? Why? Why? Was she tossing me aside? Even though our souls were one and would never be separated, she was slicing them apart with her own hand. How could she do something so cruel? For money? For pleasure? For vanity?

  How am I supposed to watch her give herself to another man!

  On a stormy night, he disappeared from the house. He had despised her ever since. He hoped only for vengeance against her and crawled up from the depths of hell blazing with dark flames to return to the world
.

  But she had died and left him behind. He was assaulted by a despair even greater than before.

  Then he had learned of her daughter, and when he saw her… he knew how he would get back the time he had lost.

  The girl was a living reflection of her. If he could get hold of her…

  He made meticulous plans, entering her father’s company, pursuing him with the guile of a snake and the ferocity of a wolf to his death. Her father’s heart had a defect, and when the man removed his sunglasses and quirked his mouth into a smile, her father was stunned. His eyes bulged out and he tore at his chest; then he passed away with a look of anguish in his hospital bed.

  His sister, the woman who had become the man’s wife, knew what he had done to her brother and it unhinged her. “Stay away! Devil! Stay away! Stay away!!” she had shouted, backing frantically away, until her foot slipped and she toppled into the dark of the ocean.

  Everything had gone exactly as he planned.

  He had gone back in time and had “Kayano,” his betrayer, firmly in his grasp.

  By controlling her food, he took away even her will to resist him and chained her spirit. Once he had her under his control, “she” never contradicted him or turned her back on him.

  He had believed that, this time, life would go on in that way for eternity.

  So how had this happened?

  There was no time.

  He had received a letter. She had sent it to him. She was to be married in a week, and so she wanted to see him once more before then.

  His rage and despair buffeted him like a storm blowing over the hills, tightening his throat. Will she betray me again?! Will another man’s arms embrace her?!

  There was no time.

  He crumpled up the letter.

  There was no time.

  His stomach was as barren as moorland, but a hellish nausea welled up inside him.

  There was no time.

  His throat prickled, and his stomach knotted. A glob of blood he spit up made a red stain on the floor.

  He scrubbed roughly at his mouth with the back of his hand and staggered from the room.