by Yoru Sumino
Zero
The day of Yamauchi Sakura’s funeral is dreary and cloudy, entirely at odds with the girl my classmate had been.
I imagine a great many tearful people are at her funeral, their numbers and tears proving her life meant something; but I’m not among them. I didn’t attend her wake last night, either. I’ve stayed home the entire time.
One classmate in particular could have forced me to go, but I guess I’m lucky she can’t, since she’s no longer in this world. Neither my teachers nor her parents possess the authority or the personal duty to ask me to come. I’ve been able make my own decision and stick to it.
Seeing as I’m still in high school, I have to go to class whether or not anyone asks me to. But she died during school break, leaving nothing to force me out of the house and into the gloomy weather.
It’s morning, and I see both my parents off to work. I scrounge together a lunch before holing up in my room. If you think I’m seeking solitude out of feelings of sadness or the emptiness of loss, you’re mistaken.
I’ve always been the type to stay in my room, unless I had to go to school, or my former classmate dragged me out into the world.
When I’m here, I’m mostly reading books. I don’t care for self-help or instructional stuff—novels are my escape of choice. I like to lie in bed with my head on my white pillow and read my books. Hardcovers are too heavy; I prefer pocket-sized paperbacks.
The book I’m reading right now is one I borrowed from her—the only book she treasured, as she was never much of a reader. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a while now. I’d intended to read and return it before she died, but I was too late.
I can’t change that now. I figure I’ll return the book to her family when I’m finished. I’ll hold off on paying my respects to her and her family until then.
By the time I finish the book, it’s evening. At some point, I closed the curtains and turned on my fluorescent ceiling light so I could still see. My phone rings, and only then do I notice the passage of time.
The call is nothing important; just my mother. I ignore her. She calls a second time, and I ignore her again. The third time, I guess it must have something to do with dinner, so I flip open the phone and put it to my ear. She wants me to get the rice ready before she comes home. I tell her I will and hang up.
Before I return the phone to my desk, I realize something: I haven’t so much as touched that device in two days. I don’t think I’ve been purposefully avoiding it, I just haven’t thought about picking it up. If that holds some deeper meaning, then I don’t know.
I open the flip phone and scroll to the texts, then to the incoming folder. Zero unread messages. That’s hardly a surprise. Next, I look at the sent folder. Aside from calls, I see evidence of the last time I used the device.
A text message I sent to the girl who had been my classmate.
Just one sentence.
I don’t know if she ever saw it.
I consider going to the kitchen but instead flop back into bed. All I can think about is what I wrote to her.
Did she ever see my message?
I want to eat your pancreas.
If she did see it, how did she take it?
I fall asleep, still trying to find an answer.
The rice doesn’t get made until my mom comes home.
I’m not sure, but I think I meet the girl in my dreams.
One
“I want to eat your pancreas,” she said.
Yamauchi Sakura’s bizarre non sequitur came as I was dutifully organizing the books in the school library’s dusty stacks, as was my responsibility as a librarian’s assistant.
I considered ignoring it, but she and I were the only people there, and the remark was clearly intended to inspire morbid curiosity. That meant she was talking to me.
Having no other choice, I responded without turning around. If she was doing her work, her back would still be to me.
“What,” I said, “did you suddenly realize you’re a cannibal?”
She took a deep breath, coughed a little from the dust, then explained with some pride, “I saw this story on TV last night. In old times, when something was wrong with someone’s body, they would eat that part of some animal.”
I kept on not looking. “And?”
“If their liver was bad, they’d eat liver; if their stomach was bad, they’d eat stomach. I guess they believed it would heal them. So, I want to eat your pancreas.”
“My pancreas?”
“I don’t see anyone else’s pancreas here.”
She giggled. I heard the sound of hardcover books being rearranged on a shelf; so she was still working and hadn’t stopped to look my way.
I said, “I’d rather you not hang all the pressure of saving your life on one tiny organ in my body.”
“You’re right. All that stress might take out your stomach, too.”
“Go lay this on someone else, then.”
“Like who? I can’t say I like the idea of eating my own family.”
She giggled again. I didn’t; I was taking my job seriously. I wished she would learn from my example.
She continued, “That’s why you’re the only one I can ask, [Classmate Who Knows My Secret]-kun.”
“And in this scenario you’re imagining, you don’t suppose that I might need my pancreas for myself?”
“You don’t even know what a pancreas does,” she teased.
“Sure I do.”
I did know. I hadn’t always known, of course—I’d needed to look it up. I wouldn’t have had any reason to if not for her.
This made her happy, and she turned toward me. I could tell both from the sound of her breathing and the movement of her feet. Turning only my head, I gave her a quick glance. Her expression was so happy, her face alive with beads of perspiration. It was hard to believe she would be dead soon.
She wasn’t the only one sweating. It was July, with global warming in full effect, and the air conditioning struggled to extend to the archive room.
Gleefully she said, “Don’t tell me you looked it up.”
I might have tried to avoid answering, but she was too worked up to let this go. Better to just get it over with.
“The pancreas regulates digestion and metabolism,” I said. “For instance, it secretes insulin that converts sugar into usable energy. Without the pancreas, people can’t make energy, and they die. I’m sorry, but I can’t offer you mine on a platter.”
As I turned my attention back to my work, she howled with laughter. I figured my tiny quip must have gone over better than I’d expected, but that wasn’t why she laughed.
“How about that,” she said. “You’ve taken an interest in me after all, haven’t you?”
I took a moment to form an answer, then said, “A classmate dying of a serious illness is always going to be interesting.”
“No, I mean me, as a person.”
I paused. “Who can say?”
“Oh, come on!” she said with more laughter. The heat must have dazed her, making her not think straight. I worried for her condition.
I kept working in silence until the librarian came to get us.
It was time to close up the school library for the day. I slid a book partly off the shelf to mark my position, then looked around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten any of my possessions. We exited the sweltering archives for the library’s main room, where the cool air struck my sweaty skin and sent a shiver down my body.
“It feels so nice in here,” my classmate said, as she twirled her way behind the circulation desk. She retrieved a towel from her school bag and wiped her face. I followed her—at a slower pace, and without the spinning—and dried myself off, too.
/> “Good work today,” the forty-something female librarian said. “You can stay and relax a bit if you’d like. Here, I prepared some tea and sweets.”
“Wow!” the girl said. “Thanks!”
“Thank you,” I said.
I took a drink of the cold barley tea and gazed across the library. All the other students had left.
My classmate bit into a sweet bun and said, “This manjuu is delicious.”
She had a habit of reacting to every single positive thing around her.
She had already claimed a chair behind the counter. I took a pastry for myself and moved the other chair a little farther from her before sitting on it.
“Sorry to take you away from your study time,” the librarian said. “I know exams are next week.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the girl said. “We always do fine—right in the middle of the pack. Isn’t that right, [Classmate Who Knows My Secret]-kun?”
“Sure,” I said noncommittally, “as long as I listen in class, I do all right.” I bit into the manjuu. It really was delicious.
The librarian asked, “Have you thought about what you’re doing for college, Yamauchi-san?”
“Not yet,” she replied. “Or maybe I don’t feel like I need to.”
“And you, [Well-Mannered Student]-kun?”
“I haven’t either,” I said.
Reaching for a second manjuu, the girl protested, “You can’t be that way, [Classmate Who Knows My Secret]-kun. You have to think about the future.”
I ignored her meddling and drank another sip of tea. The store-bought drink tasted good, and familiar.
The librarian said, “You both have to think about your futures. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll be as old as I am before you know it.”
The girl gave me a glance, then laughed pleasantly and said, “Aw, that won’t happen.” The two exchanged a chuckle, but not me. I took another bite of my pastry and washed it down with the barley tea.
My classmate was right. It wouldn’t happen.
She would never be as old as the librarian, and only she and I knew it. She had only glanced at me, but I found it about as subtle as a stage wink from some Hollywood actress telling a joke.
Just to be clear, the reason I didn’t laugh wasn’t because her joke was too risky. Rather, I was irritated by her self-satisfied, Look at me, I’m saying something funny expression.
She returned my sullen lack of reaction with a sharp, frustrated glare, and she kept it on me until I finally offered her a slight upturn of a smile.
We sat in the closed library for about a half an hour before deciding to go home.
It was just past six in the evening when we reached the shoe cubbies inside the school’s entrance, but the sun was still going strong. Through the open doorway came the energetic voices of student athletes practicing after school sports.
“It sure was hot inside there today,” the girl said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“I hope it’s not that bad tomorrow. At least after that, it’ll be the weekend.”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked.
“I’m listening.”
I exchanged my indoor school slippers for my outdoor shoes and went outside. In front of the building’s main entrance was a small courtyard and the front gate, with the sports grounds on the opposite side of the school. As I walked, the voices of the baseball and rugby players gradually dimmed.
Stomping her feet, my classmate caught up to me and demanded, “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to listen when other people are talking?”
“Sure they did. I said I was listening.”
“All right then, so what was I talking about?”
I thought a moment, then said, “The manjuu.”
With the cheerful chiding of a daycare teacher, she said, “You weren’t listening! You mustn’t tell lies.”
I was short for a boy my age, and she was tall for a girl, which left us at about the same height. There was something refreshing about being scolded by someone just a little bit shorter than me.
“Sorry,” I said, “I was thinking about something.”
“Oh?”
Her frown disappeared as if it had never been there and she leaned in, peering at me with intense interest. I briefly hastened my pace to regain a little distance, then I bobbed my head and said, “Yeah, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Seriously, too, for once.”
“Whoa! Well, out with it.”
“I’ve been thinking about you.”
I was careful not to turn this into a dramatic scene. I didn’t stop walking, I didn’t look at her; I tried to say it as casually as I could. I knew if she took what I said too seriously, she would be a pain about it.
But being a pain was who she was, and her reaction trampled all over my careful maneuvering.
“About me?” she gasped. “Is this what I think it is? Are you about to confess your love to me? You’re getting me all flustered!”
I waited until she was finished. Then I said, “Not like that.”
“I’m listening.”
Still keeping my tone utterly casual, I asked, “Is it really all right for you to be spending what little time you have organizing books in the school library?”
She tilted her head in confusion. “Well, yeah, obviously. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t think there’s anything obvious about it.”
“Oh?” she asked. “And what do you suggest I should be doing instead?”
“Don’t you have a lot of things you want to do? Like meeting up with your first crush, or maybe hitchhiking around in foreign countries until you find the place you want to spend your last days?”
This time she tilted her head in the opposite direction. She hummed in disagreement and said, “I get what you’re saying, but… Let me put it this way: you have things you want to do before you die, too, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Yet you’re not doing them. Either one of us could die tomorrow. That goes the same for you and just as much for me. Every day is worth the same as any other. What I did or didn’t do today doesn’t change its worth. Today, I had fun.”
I thought it over for a moment, then said, “Okay.”
She had a point. As much as I didn’t want to agree, I found myself seeing the truth in it.
Just as she would die one day soon, so, too, would I. I couldn’t know when, but it was certain. It was entirely possible I might die before she did.
Having to face her own mortality had given her remarkable insight. Just a bit, I reassessed my opinion of the girl walking beside me.
Not that she would care how I estimated her. She was liked by far too many people for her to bother over how someone like me felt.
Just then, a boy in a soccer uniform came running from the direction of the front gate. The moment he saw her, his expression brightened.
Sakura noticed him and gave him a small wave, saying, “Go get ’em!”
“See you, Sakura,” he said.
He jogged past us with a breezy smile and an easy, confident step. He was in our class, but he didn’t even give me a glance.
“That jerk,” the girl said. “He ignored you, [Classmate Who Knows My Secret]-kun. I’ll have to teach him some manners tomorrow!”
“You don’t have to. Actually, please don’t. It doesn’t bother me.”
It really didn’t. Of course, our classmates would treat us differently—she and I were about as opposite as two people could be. Nothing would change that.
“That attitude is why you don’t make any friends,” she said.
“It’s just the truth. Don’t waste your time.”
“See,” she groaned, “that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
We’d reached the school’s front gate. My house and hers were in opposite directions, and this was where we always parted. I wished we didn’t have to.
“Later,” I
said. I wasn’t going to show my regret now.
I was about to turn away from her when she stopped me by saying, “Listen. About what you said…”
She had a pleased look on her face, with an impish smile that meant she had probably just thought of some way to mess with me. Whatever my face looked like, I was sure it wasn’t pleased.
“I suppose,” she said, “that if you’re so insistent about helping me spend what little time I have left more wisely, I could let you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you doing anything Sunday?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I have a date with this girl. She’s really cute, but if I don’t spend time with her, she gets all hysterical and it turns into this big whole thing.”
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“What if I am?”
“Then it’s settled,” she said. “Meet me in front of the train station at eleven on Sunday morning. I’ll write about it in my memoir, so you’d better come.”
Showing no actual concern or need for my assent, she waved goodbye and began walking home. Beyond her, the summer sky gazed down upon us, with its orange and pink only just starting to give way to ultramarine.
Without waving, I turned my back to her and started walking. As I took the familiar way home, the boisterous chatter and laughter around the school faded away, and the deep blue gradually claimed the rest of the sky. I saw the same streets I always did, and she saw the same streets she always did, but I got the feeling how we saw them was completely different.
I would keep walking this same path until I graduated high school.
I wondered how many more times she would walk hers.
Then I remembered what she said. I couldn’t know exactly how many more times I would walk mine. I shouldn’t see my path any differently than she saw hers.
I held a finger to my neck to make sure I was still alive. I took a step with each pulse of my heartbeat, and my mood soured by the forced awareness of the transience and fragility of my life.
A cool evening breeze came along and distracted me from this train of thought. I decided to think of something more positive—deciding whether or not I would leave the house on Sunday.
