by Eto Mori
Praise for Colorful
“Certain books, you know the ones, get under your skin. I was extraordinarily moved by Eto Mori’s Colorful. It was as if Makoto was speaking directly into my own ear in the dark. This intimate, brave novel has already been read by millions in Japan. It cries out to be read by millions more.”
—PETER ORNER, author of Maggie Brown & Others
“Eto Mori’s Colorful is ingenious, funny, and offers razorkeen insights into adult lives. It will captivate English language readers as it has millions of Japanese.”
—KATHERINE GOVIER, author of The Printmaker’s Daughter and The Ghost Brush
“Through Jocelyne Allen’s translation of the Japanese classic Colorful, author Eto Mori invites a new generation of readers to view the coming-of-age experience, though rife with travails, with heart and good humor. Whether in Japan or the United States, readers will find space in these pages to laugh, reflect—and keep breathing.”
—KIT FRICK, author of See All the Stars and I Killed Zoe Spanos
“Unlike anything I’ve ever read before, Colorful is a fresh and bold story that asks big and important questions about death, mental health, and most important, what it means to truly live. Makoto is a singular character whose struggles will be deeply relatable to many young people. A truly special novel.”
—JASMINE WARGA, author of Other Words for Home, a Newbery Honor Book, and My Heart and Other Black Holes
“In this welcome and timely translation, American readers meet Makoto, a modern-day Holden Caulfield who has had it with academic pressure, social rejection, and family expectations. His page-turning adventures are both caustic and tender, and entirely real, and his journey teaches that even if we’re kind of a mess, we’re still doing our best and that’s what matters. Colorful is ultimately an outstretched hand to young adults. It delivers the most craved-for reassurance: you’re okay, and you are not alone.”
—JULIE LYTHCOTT-HAIMS, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult
COLORFUL
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Afterword
COLORFUL
PROLOGUE
As my dead soul leisurely drifted off to some dark place, this angel I’d never seen before suddenly appeared right in my way.
“Congratulations! You’ve won the lottery!” The angel smiled. He gave me this speech:
“You committed a grave error before you died. Hence, your soul is now culpable. Generally, you would be disqualified at this time and removed from the cycle of rebirth. Which is to say, you would never be reborn again. However, more than a few consider this to be a barbaric taking of life, and so our boss occasionally gives lottery winners a second chance, as it were. You are one such lucky soul! Against all odds, you’ve won that lottery!”
I wasn’t quite happy with this sudden news. If I’d had eyes, I would’ve opened them wide in surprise, and if I’d had a mouth, I would’ve dropped my jaw and gaped. But I was nothing more than a formless soul. It was strange enough that I could hear the angel’s voice and see him there before me. He looked just like a regular human being, a tall man with beautiful, delicate features, his slim body draped in white fabric. He had the wings on his back, at any rate, but I couldn’t see a halo on his head.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But I’ll pass.”
“And why is that?”
“Just because.” I’d already forgotten everything about my previous existence. When I spoke to the angel, my voice sounded masculine, so I figured I was a guy, but I had absolutely no memory of what kind of guy or what sort of life I’d led. All that stayed with me was this vague weariness, this total disinterest in ever going back to the world below. “Because I don’t want to. You know that thing where someone wanders into a department store and then this big ball pops open over their head and confetti falls all over the place, and it’s all, Congratulations! You’re the one millionth customer! And everyone’s making this whole big fuss and forcing this trip to Hawaii on them right then and there? That’s what this feels like. I just want to stay home and sleep.”
“I do understand what you’re saying.” The angel calmly accepted my complaint. “Between the two of us, those of us who work upstairs also have our fair share of doubts about this lottery method. Unfortunately, however, the boss’s decisions are final. Neither you nor I—nor anyone else, for that matter—can disobey his word. He is, after all, the father of all creation.”
I couldn’t really say anything when he came at me like that. I had a mean one on my hands here. I was forced into silence.
“Besides.” The angel’s bright blue eyes glittered ominously. “What awaits you is absolutely, most certainly not a Hawaiian paradise.”
The angel’s name was Prapura. He was a guide, currently in charge of me. His job now was to take me to the place where I would have my second chance.
But a second chance at what exactly?
In that place between heaven and earth, I tried to get my head around what was going on, while the angel went ahead to give me the rough overview of things pre-departure.
The gist of it all was:
1. My soul had made a pretty serious mistake in my previous life. Normally, I wouldn’t get to be reborn again, but fortunately, I’d won the lottery and a chance for a do-over.
2. A do-over meant that I would go back for training in the world below, the place where I failed in my previous life.
3. Training meant that my soul would borrow someone else’s body down there for a fixed period of time. Prapura’s boss would decide on the body and the family I would stay with.
4. In angel industry slang, this training was referred to as a “homestay.”
5. Of course, the family you ended up with could be hit or miss. For every good family, there was an awful one. For every tragedy, a comedy. I could even end up in a violent home. But the size of my crime in my previous life determined my new home, so I could complain all I wanted, but I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. (Damn . . .)
6. Prapura would help me with any problems I had during the homestay. But how much help he was would depend on his mood.
7. If I made good progress with the training, at a certain point I would get back my memories of my previous life. The instant I realized how big my mistake had been, the homestay would be over. My soul would leave the borrowed body and move on to whatever came next, safely restored to the cycle of rebirth. Hoorah, huzzah, basically. (Seriously?)
“That’s essentially how this will proceed, Makoto.” Prapura had no sooner wrapped up his little lecture than he was twitching his wings, impatiently. “Now, let us make our way to the world below.”
“Makoto?”
“From this moment on, you will be Makoto Kobayashi. He attempted suicide by overdose three days ago, and he remains in critical condition. Just between us, he’s going to die soon without ever regaining consciousness. The moment his soul slips out, you will step inside.”
“So you’re saying,” I started, “I’m stealing his body?”
“Don’t be so morbid!” Prapura snapped. “Please think of it more as you’ll be taking care of his body for a short while. Let’s have a positive attitude here, shall we?”
“So what’s this Makoto Kobayashi like?”
“You’ll find out once you become him.”
I would’ve li
ked a little more advance prep, but Prapura already had his wings fully deployed. He looked extremely fed up with all this talk. He yanked on my arm and flew upward, dragging me along with him.
The floor abruptly dropped out from under me, and then we were plummeting downward at the speed of light. Prapura’s wings didn’t seem to be doing much of anything. Was he really an angel? Or was he a demon? I suddenly got very nervous, but then I lost consciousness and was swallowed up by a swirling vortex of brilliant color.
1
When I came to, I was Makoto Kobayashi. I had this total physical sensation of “you got a body for real, right here.” My soul, which had been naked an instant before, was now wrapped in flesh like a heavy coat. The flesh seemed to be lying on a futon. No, wait, a bed. The place stank of disinfectant, too, so maybe a hospital bed? And then I remembered that Makoto had tried to commit suicide. He was supposed to be in critical condition or something . . . Hm? I could hear someone crying. Who?
Before I’d taken even half a second to brace myself for what I’d find, I opened my eyes and found a middle-aged lady sobbing helplessly.
“Makoto,” the lady murmured, dazed. Then she shrieked, “Makoto?!”
I could feel the other human shadows in the room all turn toward me at the same time. I indeed appeared to be in a hospital room—an array of grim medical devices stood on either side of the bed, and the white uniforms of nurses flitted in and out of sight on the other sides of the machines.
“It can’t be,” someone groaned, and then the white shadows were bustling around the room.
“Makoto!” a middle-aged man shouted, as he propped the lady up. “He came back! He’s alive!!”
Later, I found out that Makoto Kobayashi had been pronounced dead just ten minutes earlier. His spirit had risen up to wherever it was off to, so I’d slipped into his vacated body and popped his eyes open. No wonder they were shocked. Who wouldn’t be?
“Heartbeat . . . Blood pressure . . . I can’t believe this!” Even the doctor got caught up in the excitement.
The woman and the man were over the moon at Makoto’s resurrection. It was obvious that they were his parents. Of course they were wild with joy—their dead son had just come back to life. They cried out silently as they stroked my cheeks, rubbed my arms, hugged my whole body. It was strange but I wasn’t bothered by these complete strangers getting all grabby with me. Makoto’s body was taking it all in ahead of my mind.
There was one more person in Makoto’s family. A boy in a school uniform at the foot of the bed, shoulders squared, glaring at me with bloodshot eyes. While everyone else in the room—the parents, the doctor, the nurses—was celebrating, he was the only one acting too cool for school. This was Makoto’s older brother, Mitsuru, a fact I would only learn much later. Right now, though, I didn’t know how old Makoto was, let alone Mitsuru, so I wondered hazily if the glaring kid was a brother or something.
“Makoto, you made it back. Makoto! Makoto!” The half-crazed father repeating his son’s name over and over.
The mother clinging to my body, refusing to let go.
The brother, intensely aloof.
Although I wasn’t exactly in a position for careful observation, I had at least come face to face with the family I’d be staying with. They didn’t look particularly rich or like one of them was a celebrity. But given the spiteful look that angel gave me, I hadn’t expected much to begin with. Still, at first glance, they seemed like normal people, and I decided to chalk that up as a win. I mean, it was plenty possible that when I opened my eyes, I could have been surrounded by eight macho men in red-and-yellow-striped leotards, weeping profusely over my prone body. Nothing better than average when it comes to life in general.
The instant I relaxed a bit, I was overcome with a sudden sleepiness. Makoto hadn’t left his body in the best shape when he died back there. I was bogged down by this sluggish feeling; I couldn’t make the body move too well. Eventually, I dropped off without saying so much as a word.
And so went my debut as Makoto Kobayashi.
The sluggish, drowsy feeling continued for a while. Makoto’s body recovered so well and so quickly that his doctor nearly vibrated with delight. But maybe because of the medication they gave me three times a day, I was still constantly sleepy and the body felt so heavy around me. This didn’t strike me as such a bad thing. I mean, I was in the hospital with absolutely nothing to do anyway, so I took advantage of the situation to rest up.
I’d spend three-quarters of the day asleep, and when I did pop my eyes open from time to time like I’d just remembered that I could, I’d see the face of Makoto’s mother. Or his father. Or Mitsuru’s back.
If it was light outside the window when I woke up, the mother was always right there beside me. A small woman with distinct features, she’d be plopped down in the chair next to the bed, staring at me like she was counting the number of times I blinked. When our eyes met, she’d speak to me briefly, stuff like “How do you feel?” or “Should I turn on the TV?” And that was basically it. She was weirdly hesitant around me, like she was touching something painfully bruised. She acted strange at first, but when I thought about it, it made sense. Makoto had committed suicide, so he must have had the problems to match. She was probably just trying to be considerate.
Mitsuru would always show up later in the afternoon and sit with me for a few hours to give the mother a break. Eternally silent, once he had laid out my supper and then cleaned up after it, he would turn his back to me and pore over all these textbooks and reference books until he left. I learned from the textbooks that he was in twelfth grade.
One day, without thinking too much, I tried to strike up a conversation. “Must be rough getting ready for college entrance exams, huh?”
He shot me a stony glare before he slammed his textbook shut and quickly stepped out into the hallway. Had all that studying messed with his head?
Evening visiting hours were from seven until nine, and Makoto’s father never failed to come during this time. A grin would spread across his fleshy face, ear to ear, and instantly, the excessively large private room would be bursting with cheer. Unlike the mother, the father didn’t anxiously monitor my face or take particular care in choosing his words. Instead, he went ahead and unburdened himself to me, talking about anything and everything on his mind—“I’m really so happy you came back to life, Makoto” or “I’ve never thanked God so much before.” He was also popular among the nurses, and they often told me what a good father he was. It felt kind of nice, even if he was someone else’s father.
Anyway, I got a different impression from each member of this family, but the one thing they seemed to have in common was how deeply they cared about Makoto. I mean, that grumpy brother wouldn’t come to the hospital every day if he didn’t love him.
For me, they were nothing more than a host family, but for them, Makoto was a son and a brother. The reality of this gradually sank in while I was in the hospital. This might be the one lesson I learned during those sleepy, sluggish, dopey days.
Hospital life ended a week later. I’d fully recovered a while back, but my case was so rare that the hospital was collecting data as it kept an eye on me. (After all, people don’t usually come back to life ten minutes after their heart stops.) I was apparently quite the prize, their little miracle boy.
“You did die once there,” my still-young doctor told me as he pinched my cheek. “Once is enough, okay? Don’t go dying again.”
One early Sunday afternoon on a clear autumn day, I was discharged. The whole family came to pick me up, and we all piled into the car and drove to the Kobayashi house in a corner of a quiet residential neighborhood. The spotless living room was filled with flowers in vases, and there was sushi and steak and a whole feast jammed onto a low table in the center. Forgetting how disappointed I’d been a second ago when I saw the very average house, which dashed any remaining hope that they were rich, I was simply moved at the family’s warm thoughtfulness. So moved, in
fact, that I even gave a little speech on Makoto’s behalf. “Thank you so much! All of you!” I’d barely spoken to them while I was in the hospital to keep from slipping up and letting any seams show, so this little display brought hot tears to the corners of his parents’ eyes. Talking about full-on familial harmony at its peak here.
Prapura told me how my placement environment would be determined by the size of the mistake I made in my previous life, and if that was the case, I was starting to think that whatever I did, it couldn’t have been that serious, no big deal. Like maybe I had been a bad drunk. Or a big spender. Or a lady-killer who made women cry.
What I didn’t get was why Makoto would go and kill himself when he was blessed with such a loving family. I sometimes forgot that he made the choice to die. The word suicide was apparently forbidden in this household since no one even came close to saying it.
“I’ll make your favorites for supper, too, Makoto. But maybe you should go lie down for a bit? Have a little nap in your room before supper?” Makoto’s mother suggested, kindly, once the table was nearly empty.
I was indeed a bit wiped out by this first taste of happy family life, so this was a welcome proposal. “Yeah. I’ll go lie down for a little while.”
I stood up and then froze. Even if I wanted to go to Makoto’s room, I didn’t know where in the house it was. What was I supposed to do now?
“What’s wrong, Makoto?” the mother asked.
“You not feeling good?” the father frowned.
The family was getting suspicious. Just then, with impeccable timing, my guide Prapura appeared in the doorway of the living room. Smartly dressed in a suit for some reason, he beckoned for me to follow.
“Okay,” I almost said, and then swallowed the word with a gasp. It hit me that I was the only one there who could see the angel.
Prapura climbed the stairs wordlessly, leading his silent charge.
Makoto’s bedroom was on the second floor of the house, a Western-style space of about nine square meters. Simple, largely black furniture against a sky-blue rug. The entire room was bright thanks to all the windows, and the fresh green curtains drew in the abundant light. Prapura stopped in front of these curtains, while I sat down on the edge of the bed.