The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  Haven’t found him? Found who? And why are they talking about my school?

  None of it made any sense.

  “What’s going on?” Yuriko asked her mother again. Her only answer was a fresh round of tears.

  “Mrs. Morisaki, you’d better tell Yuriko what happened. I’ll answer the phone if it rings. I think it’d be better if you talked with her, just the two of you.” Mrs. Kiuchi smiled a crooked smile at Yuriko, the puzzle pieces finally coming apart and falling to the ground. “Why don’t you two go to her room?” She put a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder, urging her on. Her mother grabbed Yuriko’s hand firmly and stood.

  They left the living room and went directly into the room on the left. This was Yuriko’s room. A small stuffed bear hung on a loop around the doorknob.

  And next to her room was—

  My brother’s room. Every morning when they left for school, he always made a point of closing his door firmly behind him. He was in eighth grade and had been making a big deal about his “privacy” lately.

  His door was open. She could see his desk and chair inside. A jacket was hanging over the back of the chair.

  Yuriko’s brother. Hiroki Morisaki. Age: fourteen.

  Yuriko silently gasped. They weren’t talking about hearing from my school, they were talking about hearing from his school!

  They went into Yuriko’s room, and her mother quietly closed the door behind them. She motioned for Yuriko to sit at her desk, while she sat on the floor. She looked weak, like she might collapse on the spot.

  Yuriko jumped out of her chair and grabbed her mother. “Mom, what happened to Hiroki?”

  When she had heard something had happened at home, Yuriko hadn’t thought of Hiroki for a second. Her brother was one of the most self-assured, safety-minded people she knew. He got the best grades. He excelled at sports. They had picked him for the Little League team when he was only in first grade, and he was in regular rotation as a pitcher by fourth grade. Hiroki had joined the swim team in middle school—someone had told him swimming would make his pitching arm stronger—and was already breaking records.

  The only thing she could imagine happening to him was some kind of accident. Maybe a traffic accident, or a freak drowning at the pool. Except it was too cold for the school to be still using the pool. So it must have been a traffic accident. Maybe a car hit him.

  “Mom? Did Hiroki get run over?”

  Her mother grabbed Yuriko’s hands in her own. Her face was streaked with tears. She had been crying so hard she could barely keep her eyes open. She hiccuped. It made Yuriko feel like crying too. She didn’t think she had ever seen her mother look so stricken by grief. Or any adult, for that matter.

  “Is…he dead?”

  Her mother shook her head, her eyes still closed. Yuriko felt the fear that had been stabbing at her chest suddenly slip away. The echoing words in her head faded. Whew. So he didn’t buy it.

  Then why is Mom crying?

  “Your brother—”

  “Yeah?”

  “At school, during recess…”

  “Yeah?”

  “He got into a fight with some friends.” Her mother’s voice was hoarse. “And…he hurt them.” She took a breath and hiccuped again. “The whole thing must have scared him, because he ran from the school. They don’t know where he is now. His teachers and some men from the local fire department are looking for him.”

  Something else lifted off Yuriko’s chest. This time, she wasn’t sure what it was. She wasn’t even sure if it was something she had wanted to keep.

  “Don’t worry,” her mother said, sobbing as she stroked Yuriko’s hair. “I’m sure they’ll find him soon. Once he’s back, we’ll go to his friends’ houses and apologize, all of us together. That will settle things.” She spoke gently, but her face betrayed her feelings. She didn’t think that would settle things at all, not really.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Her dad and her brother got along famously. Recently, Hiroki had made a show of stepping out on his own to assert some independence from the family, but he was still his proud father’s son. “He must be really worried! Is he out looking for him with his teachers?”

  Her mother nodded, then a fresh round of sobs erupted from somewhere deep inside her.

  Her mom wasn’t lying, Yuriko was pretty sure about that. But she also wasn’t telling the whole truth. Finally, Yuriko found out what had happened that evening.

  Hiroki Morisaki had taken a knife with him to school that day. Not a cooking knife from home. A long knife he had bought somewhere. Someone who saw it said the blade was almost fifteen centimeters.

  Hiroki had stabbed two other boys in his class.

  One in the stomach, the other in the neck.

  The boy he’d got in the neck was dead even before the ambulance arrived.

  It had happened during recess after lunch. The boys had been out behind the gymnasium, where there was no one else to see them. No one even knew it had happened until the boy who was stabbed in the stomach came crawling into the school looking for help.

  By the time the news spread and the school had erupted into chaos, Hiroki Morisaki was nowhere to be found.

  He’d taken the knife with him.

  No one had seen him leave school. They didn’t know whether he’d run or walked away. Whether he’d been crying or laughing. They didn’t even know if he had been angry.

  Or frightened.

  All kinds of people came to their house: parents from the PTA, Hiroki’s middle school teachers. The police came too, and the firemen. And then there were the neighbors. Most of their relatives lived far away, so none of them made it there that day, but the phone was ringing off the hook.

  All Yuriko and her mother could do was wait at home. Occasionally, her father would call her mother’s cell phone. Once, she had given the phone to Yuriko, but all she could do when she heard her father’s voice was nod quietly. There was nothing to say.

  The day waned and night came. They still hadn’t found Hiroki.

  The incident was on the news that evening. They were calling Yuriko’s brother “Boy A.” With a grave look on his face, the newscaster was saying that the police were looking for any information that might help them find Boy A as quickly as possible.

  Yuriko sat still while all around her time marched on.

  Yuriko wanted to wait in Hiroki’s room. She felt like if she waited there he might come home. But they wouldn’t let her. Adults were in and out all day and evening, examining his things, probing for clues.

  Her mother called Hiroki’s cell phone over and over again. The automated message said that it was turned off. She kept calling.

  Yuriko didn’t have a cell phone of her own. She thought about her friends—Kana must be worried sick. Of course, even if Kana tried calling the house, she’d never be able to get through with all the other people calling. If Yuriko couldn’t go into Hiroki’s room, then she wanted to at least be able to talk to Kana, but neither of those things was going to happen anytime soon, so she sat silently in her chair and did nothing.

  It was almost as though everyone had forgotten she existed.

  And in “everyone,” she included herself. Even though Yuriko was right there in the room, she felt like she wasn’t. She felt like she was just as lost as her brother.

  Maybe I am. Maybe my soul’s off somewhere with Hiroki. She had heard somebody on television saying that human beings had this kind of ability. Anyone could do it. Their body would sit still while their mind traveled freely, seeing things, hearing things, feeling things, even talking to people.

  Hiroki! Yuriko tried calling in her mind. Hiroki, can you hear me? It’s me, Yuriko. Come home. Everyone’s so worried.

  If she thought it loudly enough, she was sure that her soul or whatever it was would transmit her voice to her brother. If she only wanted it badly enough.

  Yuriko called all that night, but there was no answer.

  She was sure she had eate
n something and probably gone to the bathroom. Maybe she even slept a little. She couldn’t be sure though. Everything felt so distant, like she was looking at her own life backwards through a pair of binoculars.

  Her mother had worn herself out crying.

  Now the harsh light of the morning sun was spilling into her room through the lace curtains. Yuriko always slept late, but her brother was an early riser. He said it was because he always had sports practice to go to in the mornings. Wherever he was now, she bet he was already awake.

  If only she knew where that wherever was.

  The reality of the situation had finally taken concrete form in Yuriko’s heart. It was as hard as stone, and heavy. She felt like she might be crushed under its weight. Crushed so completely she would no longer be able to feel that she was being crushed. She would no longer be able to feel anything.

  Two days passed. Hiroki Morisaki’s disappearance was the top story on every news channel. boy a still missing went the headline. They mentioned that the boy with the stomach wound, who had been unconscious in critical condition for a while, was now showing signs of recovery. The television had been on constantly since Yuriko had come home from school, but when the news started reporting fears that Boy A might have committed suicide, everyone in the room rushed to turn it off. Yuriko wasn’t sure who hit the switch first. It might’ve been one of her grandparents from Kyushu, who had finally gotten there the night before. Or it might have been one of her grandparents from Mito, who had been squabbling from the moment they walked through the door.

  A frenzied crowd of journalists and cameramen hovered near their apartment building. Yuriko and her mother were moved to a hotel. She packed all of her clothes into the backpack she had used for summer camp the year before. Her mother asked her grandparents to come with them, but her father, who only came home long enough to change clothes before disappearing again, thought there was no point in them being there anyway, and told them so, which only served to worsen the mood.

  The police escorted them to their hotel so that the reporters wouldn’t follow them. It wasn’t like the resort hotel Yuriko had been to once on a family vacation. They told her it was called a business hotel. Inside, the rooms were small, and there were more vending machines in the lobby than there was hotel staff.

  She hadn’t gone back to school once since she had left early that day.

  Yuriko sat on her bed, which smelled faintly of laundry detergent, and gazed absentmindedly at a cheap print of an abstract painting that hung in the middle of a white wall. The frame was slightly askew.

  They had fled their home to seek refuge in the hotel.

  Everything around her that she had always taken for granted was gone.

  Her brother had taken it all away.

  Her mother was in the bathroom with the door closed, talking on her cell phone. When she finally came out, leaning on a wall for support, she looked up at Yuriko. “Yuriko. Some of the police are going to come, okay?”

  Yuriko looked at her mother.

  “They say they want to talk to you. It might help them find Hiroki. Don’t worry; I’ll be with you the whole time. That’s okay, right?”

  There was no point saying she didn’t want them to come. If there was anything she didn’t want, it was everything. All of it.

  The police were there in less than half an hour. There was one man wearing a suit and a female officer in uniform. Yuriko wondered how they would all fit in the tiny room and where they would sit—there were only two chairs. But the police took her to their patrol car and brought her down to the police station.

  Everything that had happened since the taxi ride home seemed like a tremendous waste of time.

  They didn’t bring her to one of those questioning rooms you always see on TV. It was more like a meeting room, with nice chairs and a big table. A woman from the child counseling center, the same age as Yuriko’s mother, was waiting for them there

  Yuriko tensed when she heard who the woman was. Why did they need a counselor? Had her mother asked for one? If her brother did something bad, did that automatically make her a problem child too? Someone they needed a counselor just to talk to?

  Her mother bowed to them, saying she’d do anything to help.

  The counselor began talking to her in a soft, easy tone, but Yuriko didn’t reply. She looked out the window.

  The view from the police station window was no different than what you could see from a taxi. For some reason, that scared her. It would make more sense if the city looked different from here somehow. Wasn’t the police station a special place? Weren’t the people they brought in here, like Yuriko, special?

  “I was wondering if you could tell us a few things, Yuriko,” the man in the suit said. He was smiling gently enough, but there was a strange sadness to him. Why should he be sad about Hiroki? Isn’t he trying to catch my brother? Then she thought it might just be the way his eyebrows arched toward the middle. Like a clown’s.

  They asked all kinds of questions, using all kinds of words, but Yuriko immediately understood there was really only one thing they wanted to know.

  Had she noticed anything unusual about Hiroki lately?

  There was nothing unusual about her brother. Ever since the time she had first realized Hiroki was her brother, that was all he had been. He hadn’t been sad about anything. He hadn’t been in a bad mood. He had just been her brother.

  Just her brother. Nothing else.

  Yuriko said as much in as few words, and as quietly as possible. She thought she should talk a little louder, but she just couldn’t summon the strength.

  “I see,” said the sad clown, and he tapped his chin with the end of his ballpoint pen. “We talked to Hiroki’s teacher at school, and he said that ever since Hiroki started the eighth grade, he’d been having trouble getting along with his classmates. Did he ever say anything about that to you? Even something little in passing?”

  Yuriko was sitting wedged between her mother and the child counselor. When she didn’t respond to the man’s question, the counselor looked her in the eye. Then the police officer asked, “You got along well with your brother, didn’t you, Yuriko?”

  Yuriko didn’t answer. Her mouth was closed, and she looked down at her hands where they rested on her knees. She had woven the tips of her fingers together.

  “You talked to your brother about school sometimes, didn’t you? Did he ever tell you about his school?”

  Yuriko still didn’t respond, so now the counselor looked up at her mother. “Maybe you heard something?”

  Her mother was looking down at her lap. She reached out and held Yuriko’s hand. Her skin was cold. Why is Mom’s hand so cold?

  “Well they are brother and sister, and three years apart besides…and he’s in middle school…” her mother said. Her voice sounded even weaker than Yuriko’s.

  “Is that so? Yes, of course,” the counselor said, answering her own half-asked question. She looked at the policeman.

  Everyone sat in silence, waiting for someone to speak.

  The policemen’s words were echoing in Yuriko’s head. You got along well with your brother. You got along well with your brother.

  Well, yeah. But she couldn’t help feeling that that didn’t quite describe it.

  They did get along. Yuriko was fond of her brother. And she was pretty sure he didn’t dislike her. He would help her with her homework sometimes, and they would always joke around. He’d call her “little Yuri” or sometimes just “squirt.”

  When she did well on a test, he’d give her a pat on the head. And on nights when they’d seen a scary movie, and she was too afraid to go to the bathroom by herself, he would wait for her in the hall.

  All that seemed different than “getting along well.” They had a thing worked out. Her brother was the big one; she was the small one. He stood tall, and she was comfortable being at his feet.

  “Hiroki was always very protective of her,” her mother whispered, gripping Yuriko’s hand even
tighter. “I don’t think he would have told her anything to make her worry.”

  That’s right. That’s the word. “Protective.” That was their relationship. That was how it was, and how it was supposed to be until they were both grown-ups.

  “He never said anything about troubles to us…” her mother said. Her voice broke, and she turned away.

  The child counselor stood up from her chair surprisingly fast and went over to her mother, putting an arm around her for support. It was a kind thing to do, and her mother looked so frail with the counselor holding her that for the first time, Yuriko was glad the counselor had come. Not for her sake, but for her mother’s. Thank you.

  Her mother was nodding and saying she was all right.

  “Right,” said the policeman. “Well, there’s nothing we absolutely have to hear from you today, Yuriko. Just, if you think of anything, even the tiniest thing, that might help us find your brother, contact us.”

  The two police officers bowed their heads and apologized for the trouble.

  “Can we go home now? I mean to the hotel,” Yuriko said. “Mom, you look really pale—”

  “Yes, of course. Thank you, Yuriko. Ms. Morisaki, we’ll escort you back to the hotel now.”

  Her mom sat in the patrol car with her eyes closed the whole way back. She wasn’t sleeping. She looked more like she had gone unconscious. Still, she gripped Yuriko’s hand tightly and didn’t let go. Yuriko squeezed her hand back, trying to warm it up with hers.

  Life at the hotel was uneventful. A week passed, then ten days, and still they hadn’t found Hiroki.

  Gradually, the news stopped talking about him. Yuriko’s grandmother called and said that the reporters weren’t around their apartment building anymore, so she and her mother decided to go home.

  When she saw her father again he looked like he had lost several pounds, and his hair was whiter than it had been only a week before.

  “Sorry about all this, Yuriko. It must have been tough for you in the hotel. We’ll just live here like normal from now on, until Hiroki comes home. Don’t worry, Yuriko,” he added, “he’ll come home. I’m sure of it.”