by Yoru Sumino
I thought about what she’d said. About my mother, who would come home just to eat dinner with me before she went back out, even though she was not yet finished with work. My father, who traveled far away just to buy the plush toy that I really wanted, since none of the shops nearby had it. Hearing a warm send-off at my back as I left this morning, even though I had been too angry still to say a word, or eat any of the breakfast that had been made for me.
I remembered.
“I don’t want you to lose a chance to ever see them again without having made up, like I did,” she said.
At those words, I finally understood. I knew why she was crying.
“So promise me. It’s okay if you can’t do it today. Tomorrow’s fine. But you have to make up with them. You can’t turn back time.”
She pushed her bangs away and looked me straight in the eyes. It was the first time I saw her whole face. It was as clear as Skank-san’s, and as kind as Granny’s. It was beautiful.
I was not the sort of child to make light of a request from a friend. However, nor was I so thick-headed that I could banish all thoughts of last night that easily. And so I thought about it. I thought long, and I thought hard. I churned the gears of my tiny brain as hard as I could.
What was right? What was clever? What was kind?
And then, when I had thought it through, I looked Minami-san in the face, and nodded. “All right. I promise.”
The last tear fell from the corner of her eye. “Thank you.”
“But you have to promise me something too,” I said.
Now it was Minami’s turn to look curious. “You want me to put out a book?” she asked.
“Yes, that too. But it’s something else. I want you to promise me. You understand what happiness is, don’t you? But you also told me that you weren’t happy. I can’t stand for my friends not to be happy. So, please. Rewrite your story too.”
Seeing her cry, I remembered the handkerchief she had given me, and how I had prayed for her happiness. That my friends would always have a smile on their faces.
Minami-san was dumbfounded at my request. However, she grinned and nodded. “I promise. Yeah, it’s a promise.”
We put our little fingers together and curled them in a pinky swear, my golden-eyed friend watching over us. I’m sure that Miss Bobtail had no idea what was going on. Honestly, I still had no idea why Minami-san was so concerned about my mother. However, I did know why I needed to make up with her.
“See you later,” said Minami-san as my friend and I departed the rooftop.
Normally, she only waved at us, but today she watched us leave. I was so happy that I grinned back at her. Today, Minami and I had become better friends than ever. I was thrilled.
I rushed home more quickly than usual. I could tell by the blue car parked outside the building that my mother was already home. I bid my little friend farewell, and took one deep breath. Then, I rode the elevator to the tenth floor where we lived, walked down the hall, and stood before our door. I took another breath. I had to open up my heart. Sadness, loneliness, hurt, and all those other bad guys—I had to push them to the edges. Then, I told myself, I could stuff myself full of good feelings. Again and again, I thought of Minami-san’s face.
Once I was ready, I took several more breaths, then stopped with my lungs still full of air. Just like that, I unlocked the door, turned the knob, and let my voice ring out loud into the apartment, blowing all the air out from my chest.
“I’m home!”
It was afternoon break, after lunch. The classroom was normally filled with the boisterous voices of those idiot boys, but today, the adults’ voices sounded like the tittering of little birds.
I already knew that it was class observation day, a special event, but when I actually arrived the atmosphere was far more unpleasant than I imagined. With no idea what to do with myself, I simply put my head down on my desk. Perhaps assuming that I was not feeling well, Kiriyuu-kun called out to me.
“K-Koyanagi-san…are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for asking…”
“Is your mother coming? Or your father?”
Honestly, the one time he opens his mouth, I thought, but I held my tongue.
“Neither one could come. They had work.”
“O-oh, I see.”
“Did your father come today?”
“No, he had to work, so my mom came. It was his day off when we ran into you at the river that time.”
Perhaps it was the joy of having his mother around that had Kiriyuu-kun so talkative? Frankly, I thought that was wonderful. I didn’t wish to keep talking about painful things, so I decided not to ask him whether his father’s job had anything to do with the park.
Finally, class began and Hitomi-sensei had us do our greetings. The chorus was louder than usual, and it was obvious that everyone else was showing off for their parents.
“You all have a lot of energy today,” Hitomi-sensei said, so she must have thought it was out of the ordinary as well.
For today’s lesson, we were to present our thoughts about happiness. One by one, starting from the front of the classroom, we stood and spoke about our thoughts.
Kiriyuu-kun and I sat in the last row, so we came last. Because we sat in the back, I could hear many of the parents chattering to one another, and I wondered why Hitomi-sensei did not admonish them for it.
I listened silently to the other presentations, wondering if one of them might give me some hint as to my own happiness. However, they were of no help. All they had to offer were things like sweets and playing, all the ideas that I had already thought of and summarily discarded. I was not surprised to hear that Ogiwara-kun was the only to mention books.
As it grew closer to my turn, finally it came to Kiriyuu-kun.
I was an idiot to think he might mention drawing, to have even a sliver of hope about it. He stood timidly, his written composition in hand, and gave the same boring answer as the kid three places before him.
“Coward,” I muttered.
I have no idea if my voice reached him as he sat back down. However, as usual, he said nothing. Now, it was my turn.
I stood slowly. I looked at the sheet Hitomi-sensei had handed out for us to write our answers. I looked squarely at the sheet, so that I would not misread it. The very first sentence of my composition was:
I still don’t know what happiness is.
It was not that I had skipped out on my homework simply because my parents were not coming. I had thought long and hard about it. When I considered the answer Minami-san had given me, I just remembered her crying. Even so, I lacked the words to describe the shape of the feeling that had planted itself deep in my heart. I could not tell a lie, either. So I thought and I thought, and I settled on this.
I looked at Hitomi-sensei’s smiling face, and at Kiriyuu-kun with his head hung, and Ogiwara-kun looking at me. I raised my composition in my hands and began to read. Or rather, I tried to.
Just then, there was the sound of someone running down the hallway. Clack clack clack. It was not the sound of the indoor slippers that any of us wore. Honestly, did adults forget that they weren’t supposed to run in the hallways? I decided to ignore the aberrant sound and read my presentation.
However, I could not do that. The noise stopped just before our classroom, and the back door opened rudely.
Goodness, who is this interrupting my presentation? I thought, but instead of issuing a warning to this dreadful adult, a brilliant smile leapt to Hitomi-sensei’s face.
“You’re just in time!”
Just in time for what? I thought, tilting my head.
For some reason, Hitomi-sensei’s beaming smile, which had been directed at the back of the class, turned on me.
On instinct, I turned to look. And then, I turned back around. Then, with the same expression on my face as on Hitomi-sensei’s, I gave my presentation.
“My happiness is right here and now, with my mother and father here!”
Ah, I had broken my promise to Skank-san. And here I had told her that I was going to show my parents just how clever I was. I was unable to give anything but the answer I had come up with right on the spot, just like those other idiot children.
However, there was not a single lie. Because I had not prepared it beforehand, my presentation was shorter than everyone else’s. Even so, Hitomi-sensei was beaming and applauding.
“I talked with your father about how much I wanted to go, and we ended up getting the afternoon off,” my mother told me that evening, as the three of us ate dinner together for the first time in a while. They had offered to take me to a restaurant, but I told them that I wanted to eat my mother’s cooking. She forgave my selfishness with a smile.
I will have to thank Minami-san, I thought as I ate a big, tasty croquette, determined to head to the rooftop with my tiny friend as soon as school was over tomorrow.
The next day, I met up with my black-furred friend as soon as school ended, and headed for the hill. Normally at this point I would have to decide who to go see, puzzling over it like a menu at a restaurant, but today my destination was set.
As usual, there were smaller children running around the park at the bottom of the hill. Normally, I would be jealous of them spending time with their mothers at the park, but today was different. I already knew that my parents loved me.
I quickly chose the stairs to the left. The sun was burning with all its might, but was not the only cause of the sweat that dotted my forehead. It was because my head was burning with excitement at the thought of seeing Minami-san.
As I climbed the stairs, we passed by someone else. Could it be the owner of that building? If that was the case, I had to thank them for letting us use it all the time. However, I considered the possibility that he might get mad at us for that, and instead only said, “Hello,” to the suited old man.
He gave me a strange look, but returned a gentle “Hello.”
Why was it that adults always looked at you strangely when you greeted them, despite telling children that they should greet everyone they see?
Not long after that, the old iron gate came into sight. Normally it was open, but sometimes it was shut as though someone had come by to check on it.
Today, it was shut, and a sight I had not seen before unfolded before me. Normally, I could see up the stairs beyond, but today the stairs were hidden by two adults.
What was going on? I walked straight up to the adults to ask what was happening. One of the pair, a man who looked older than my father, turned to me.
“Sorry to interrupt your walk, little lady, but you can’t go past here.”
“Really? How come?”
“Up through here is a construction site. It’s dangerous, so we can’t let anyone through.”
I tilted my head. “Construction?”
“There’s an old building up at the top there. It’s falling apart, dangerous, so it’s gonna be torn down.”
There was only one old building at the top of those stairs.
“Y-you can’t!” I shouted, without thinking.
The adults looked shocked.
“Was that place a secret base of yours?” the man asked. “I’m sorry, but that place really is dangerous. If you play there, it might collapse right on top of you.”
Secret base. That was the perfect word to describe the atmosphere of that place. I was so disappointed to only learn this most fitting term just as the place was about to be destroyed. More than anything, I feared the look of sadness on Minami-san’s face.
“Say, did a high school girl come by here today?”
“A high-schooler? Nah, haven’t seen any. Yo, you see anyone?” the older man asked.
The younger man just shook his head. “Were you supposed to meet her here?”
“Yeah, I was. So, was this construction decided by whoever owns the building?”
“Hm? Yeah, that’s right.”
Nothing to be done for it, then, I thought. Even a child knew that it was up to the owner whether something was to be treasured or destroyed. If possible, I’d hoped for it to be treasured, but no adult would care about the wishes of a little kid whom they had never even met.
I was incredibly disappointed, but I knew that I couldn’t give up. “Hey, I’ve got something to ask you,” I asked the kind, smiling old man.
“What’s that?”
“If a high school student named Minami-san comes up here, can you tell her I’ll be at the big house up at the top of the hill?”
“It’s a promise.”
I wrapped my pinky around the old man’s and climbed back down the stairs with Miss Bobtail, heading for Granny’s house.
I waited there all afternoon for Minami-san, eating Granny’s sweets, but soon it was time to go home and she had still not shown up. She did not come the next day, or the next, and even though I told Granny to tell me if she ever showed up, it never happened.
A short time later, I traveled to the clearing where Minami-san’s building had been, but there was nothing but rubble. The disappointment tasted like a bowl of corn soup without a single piece of corn in it.
I would never again be able to meet with Minami-san here.
That got me thinking about a number of odd things. The first was that, though we lived in the same town, not once had I ever passed Minami-san on the street, nor even a single high school girl wearing the same uniform. The second was that the handkerchief I had received from her, which I had stored carefully away in my desk, had vanished. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find it. I began to feel a despair that went beyond despair.
The final thing was the most peculiar. No matter how much I talked about Minami-san’s story, I couldn’t remember a single thing about it. I had been so moved. I had seen such a wonderful new world, and I remembered the feeling of deepest satisfaction, but no matter how deeply I searched my brain, I had not a single memory of the contents.
I knew from reading stories that mysteries were wondrous things, but the mysteries born from my time with Minami-san only left me scratching my head.
And that was how Minami-san and I came to part.
Chapter 6
SOON, A TYPICAL SUMMER was in full swing. The temperature rose, and I sat with Skank-san, eating ice cream and bathing in the wind of an electric fan.
“It’s weird, when the breeze from the fan hits it, the ice cream always seems to melt faster.”
“That’s because when the wind blows, it sends all the warm air onto it.”
“Even this cool breeze?”
“Cool as far as you’re concerned. But it’s still warmer than the ice cream, isn’t it?”
I was so moved I thought my eyes might fall out of their sockets. Skank-san really was far sharper than I. However, not even she knew anything about why Minami-san had disappeared. It truly was a mystery.
“Life is like a watermelon.”
“And what does that mean?”
“You can chew up most of it,” I said. “But there are some little bitty parts that you still can’t eat.”
“Aha ha, that’s true. But even if you can’t eat them, you can still bury them somewhere for them to sprout into something new.”
“Whoa.”
“Say, little lady, are you full yet?”
“Not at all. Hitomi-sensei said that your appetite goes away in summer, but that’s just another mystery to me, cuz when it’s hot out I use up all my energy, so I have to eat lots!”
“Then I have a favor to ask of you. Could you run to the supermarket and buy us a wedge of watermelon?”
“I can do that!”
I proudly accepted the money from Skank-san and put my yellow socks back on. She would stay behind, freshening up for work. I loved ice cream, of course, but watermelon was one of my other favorite things. It was a wonderful thing that Skank-san loved the same things that I did.
“Maybe she was a ghost,” said Skank-san.
She rubbed lotion into her face as I
downed some barley tea before heading out into the afternoon sun.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Minami-san.”
I had not even considered that Minami-san might have been a ghost. I tried recalling her face.
“But she wasn’t see-through or anything. She had legs and stuff. I think if anything she’s probably more like a Totoro than a ghost.”
“Ha ha, I see. In that case, you’ll probably see her again, while you’re still a child.”
That might be true, I thought. I couldn’t wait for the day when I’d get to see her again.
“I’m going now!”
I donned my shoes, shoved the money into my pocket, and headed to the nearby supermarket with my little friend, who had been rolling around in the shadows.
It was fortunate that I drank that tea before heading out, I thought. Outside, it was sweltering, heat radiating from the sun and from the ground and the walls of the buildings as well. Without that tea, I might’ve shriveled up into a tiny mummy before I made it to the market.
My dark-furred friend, not suited to the summer sun, sought out the shadows. That makes sense, I thought, as she wore neither shoes nor socks on her four little feet. Of course, I had to carry her through the spots where there were no shadows. As I carried her, she sang all the while. “Meow meow!”
I sang along with her. “Happiness won’t cooome, wandering my way sooo…”
“Meow meow!”
As we reached the supermarket, there were tons of people going in and out of the automatic doors. I could not help imagining the shop itself eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds. I became a bit of a roadblock as I stood there in front of the doors, enjoying the cool breeze that came out from within, like an exhalation.
“Okay, you wait right here now.”
“Meow.”
The nice shadowy spot that I found for her had a prior occupant: a large yellow dog with a collar around his neck, many times bigger than her. Not showing the slightest hint of fear, she sat down beside him. Suddenly aware of her presence, he looked at her and she looked at him, and for some time they carried on like that. Oh my, was this the start of a new romance?