Colorful

by Eto Mori

  “Been a while, huh?” I said, sardonically. “I figured you’d be teaching me more stuff since you’re supposed to be my guide or whatever.”

  “It’s our policy,” Prapura replied, smoothly. “Better for you to go in fresh, no preconceived notions. I can’t hold your hand every step of the way here. You’ve gotta get a feel for it yourself.”

  I stared up at him. Something was off. “Hey, so, you seem totally different from up there?”

  “When in Rome, as they say.” Prapura gave me a wry grin. “To be honest, I feel like an idiot in all that angel gear on earth. Even if humans can’t see me.”

  “You even sound different, too. You were more polite up there?”

  “Clothes make the man, as they say. Ha ha! That was a joke. If I had to say, though, this me’s more the real me. We both let our hair down, deal?”

  “Uh-huh . . .” What a worldly angel I had on my hands.

  “So,” Prapura said, his voice suddenly businesslike. “How is your placement so far?”

  “Good,” I answered, proudly. “Everything’s going great. My host family seems nice, and the mom’s a good cook. Plus, this room’s not so bad. It’s way better than I thought it was gonna be. I’m seriously wondering why Makoto Kobayashi would go and kill himself with a life like this.”

  “That’s because,” Prapura said, without any expression on his face, “you don’t know the truth about your host family yet.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t know anything.” His voice was low and utterly flat, making a shiver run up my spine.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “However Makoto’s father might come off, he’s actually painfully self-serving. All that matters to him is that he come out on top. And until very recently, his mother was having an affair with her flamenco instructor. That’s what that’s supposed to mean.”

  A burp started to work its way up, and I held it back with effort. I had eaten too much steak at lunch. Now that I was thinking about it, that sushi-steak combo was over the top. Wait, what was Prapura talking about?

  “Don’t try to run from this. Fine! In that case, I’ll give you a bit more detail. Facts that you can’t run away from.” Prapura glared at me. “Makoto Kobayashi’s reasons for committing suicide come together to form a complicated maze. You can’t just ride along for free in his body; you have to take on his problems along with it.”

  The angel’s words cut into me mercilessly, plunging me from heaven to hell. Then he sat himself down on the ledge of the bay window, pulled a thick book out of his pocket, and started to flip through it.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The handbook, a must-have for any guide. It contains a record of Makoto Kobayashi’s entire life.” His hand stopped on one page. “Here we go. A few days before Makoto Kobayashi committed suicide.”

  I gulped, torn between wanting and not wanting to know at the same time.

  “His life was a series of unfortunate events, but this day in particular was the absolute worst. We can assume he had many reasons for wanting to commit suicide, but this day was what set him off,” Prapura offered in a slightly pretentious preamble.

  The tale he then told solemnly was indeed deserving of the title of “absolute worst day.”

  “It was September tenth, a Thursday. On his way home from cram school that evening, Makoto Kobayashi witnessed Hiroka Kuwabara walking arm in arm with a middle-aged man.”

  “Who’s Hiroka Kuwabara?”

  “An eighth grader at Makoto’s school who just happens to be his first love.”

  “Huh.”

  “He sees her flirting with this man, and he gets curious, naturally,” the angel continued. “So he follows them. And watches as they go into a love hotel.”

  “Damn!” I gasped.

  “This is a huge shock for Makoto. He was literally frozen in place for a minute or two. And then a new tragedy strikes. From the doorway of that very same hotel comes Makoto’s mother, snuggling up against her flamenco instructor.”

  “That lady?” That attentive, kind mother? I couldn’t even believe she’d do something like that. How much more stunned must her actual son have been?

  “This night’s so awful, it’s like a bad joke. And that wasn’t the end of it.” Prapura took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I took a cue from him and did the same to calm my pounding heart. “When Makoto got home, his older brother, Mitsuru, was in front of the TV, his face white as a sheet. He said their father’s company had just been on the news. The CEO and several members of the board had been rounded up on suspicion of fraud.”

  “For real? The father, too?!”

  “No, Makoto’s father was a rank-and-file employee. He and most of the other employees had nothing to do with the fraud business. It would appear that the CEO, a fairly peculiar man, put together a top-secret development team for the purpose.”

  “So what’d they do?”

  “The indictment is for a mail-order product called Quick’n’Easy Diet Manju. Eating one would take a kilo off, eating two, two kilos. They were selling these steamed buns with this audacious claim. But in reality, the buns were nothing more than your everyday hot-springs manju. They were doing all this other nasty stuff, too. The food company was still an up-and-comer. To launch their new octagonal sembei crackers, they tried to pass off this malarkey about the earth being octagonal as something remotely plausible. They also took water from the local supermarket taps, slapped the label ‘super water’ on it, and sold it for a high price . . . They’re not so much evil as they are ridiculous.”

  Prapura shrugged, slightly baffled.

  “But, well, be that as it may, they’re still Makoto’s father’s bosses, and he has a responsibility to them. Be it duty or debt, as they say. Anyway, the bosses were all rounded up, and the remaining executives were forced to resign en masse to make up for the whole debacle. So when Mitsuru saw all this on the news, he got worried. Their father was such a sensitive person, he was no doubt deeply upset about the whole thing. And when Makoto heard about it, he got worried, too, of course. However!”

  I held my breath for half a second before asking, “There’s more?”

  “The father finally gets home and he starts to somersault from the door all the way to the living room. He sees Makoto and Mitsuru, throws his arms around them, and kisses them. Then he tries to get them to dance the samba with him.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “He was. But not the drowning-his-sorrows type of drunk. The good kind of drunk. The celebrating kind. There was a reshuffle at the office after the management’s mass exodus, you see. Rank-and-file father found himself suddenly promoted to manager. Three steps up the corporate ladder in one leap. The old man was in high spirits indeed. All ‘why the hell would I care if my bosses were arrested or got fired’ or what have you. After all, he was finally making his way up in the world, thanks to the scandal,” Prapura spat. “Well, maybe that’s just how humans are when push comes to shove, but you really don’t want to see that side of your own father. The man might have been boring, he might not have stood out in any real way, but Makoto had been proud of his dad and how he kept plugging away. So he was all the more hurt by the whole incident.”

  I still felt uncomfortably full, my stomach painfully grumbly by the time Prapura finished talking. Perhaps, because the sun was going down, the room that had been so dazzlingly bright earlier was now awfully dark. It felt like the room itself was brooding. To avoid the angel’s sharp gaze, I looked up absentmindedly at the ceiling and around at the walls.

  There was a mirror on one of them. In it was a reflection of Makoto’s face. Narrow eyes. Low flat nose. Compact lips. A deeply nondescript sorry excuse of a face.

  When I’d come up against it for the first time in the hospital bathroom, I’d been bitterly disappointed. Are you telling me to live with a face like this? I’d cursed Prapura and his boss. Forget about the small details; as a whole, it didn’t make anythi
ng close to a cheerful impression. A smile did not suit Makoto’s face. His eyes had no life in them. At the time, I’d been totally thrown for a loop by this. Why would he look so sad and empty when he had this great family who came to see him every single day? But I felt like I was starting to get it now. His first love going into a love hotel with a middle-aged man. An adulterous mother. A dad who only cared that he was getting his piece of the pie.

  “Since we’re talking about it, I’ll just ask you,” I said, glaring at the mirror. “What’s the deal with big brother Mitsuru?”

  “Since we’re talking about it, I’ll tell you. He’s a callous and malicious young man. He does nothing but harass Makoto. Especially about his height. It bothered Makoto that he was short. The brother knows this and teases him about it on purpose.”

  “But he hasn’t said a thing to me.”

  “He’s ignoring you. He’s angry that you’d go and do something so socially unacceptable as suicide. Hey, go on and poke a hand under the bed there.”

  When I did as I was told, my fingers touched a hard, angular object. I pulled and what came out was a pair of extremely gaudy . . . boots?

  “Secret boots,” Prapura informed me. “Serious platforms on them. Put those on and you’ll suddenly be a lot taller. Makoto doesn’t wear them, though. He went and ordered them, but he’s a timid thing, so he was afraid people would find out, and he ended up tucking them away under there forever. Mitsuru found them a few days before the suicide. He teased Makoto mercilessly. ‘Give up,’ he told him. ‘Your feet are small, so you’re gonna be a shrimp your whole life.’ His height, that was the thing that worried Makoto the most.”

  I tossed the secret boots onto the rug. And then I flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. All the strength ran out of me. I felt like an idiot for getting caught up in the idea that this was a good family, all love and happiness. What exactly had that little bit of happy home theater over lunch been, then?

  “Now I almost can’t believe Makoto managed to live this long.” I turned a wry smile on Prapura. “A homestay in a place like this, I must’ve done something seriously awful in my past life.”

  “Oops! I forgot one thing.” The angel wasn’t listening to a word I said. “Makoto Kobayashi is currently in ninth grade.”

  “What?” At this height, I figured he was barely in seventh grade. Hm? Hang on a second. Ninth grade. That means . . . I gulped.

  “In other words, you’ve got high school entrance exams in six months,” Prapura announced with great delight.

  2

  What I’d thought was your average happy little family was actually a vipers’ nest. On the surface, each of them was kind and loving and warm, but underneath all that, they were hiding seriously nasty truths about who they really were. Nothing but a group of actors going through the motions of being a family. If they were allowed to keep on pretending everything was all sunshine and roses without knowing that the real Makoto was dead, so be it. I figured that meant I could do whatever I wanted.

  Standing in the kitchen, the mother looked very much the part of the elegant and stylish housewife in her lovely little lavender apron. Not even the merest shadow of her adultery hanging over her. Go ahead and keep playing at the good wife and mother if you want. But I’m done with the role of the good son. I suddenly felt like her home-cooked dinners were tarnished. I started leaving them mostly untouched.

  The father. He looked like he’d give up his seat in a heartbeat if an elderly person came along, even in a crowded rush-hour train, and the smile would never leave his face. What did it feel like to sit in his ill-gotten manager’s chair, the good fortune that came to him out of his own boss’s misfortune? Go ahead and do your little dance over your teensy promotion with that hypocritical little smile on your face. But don’t turn that feeble grin at me. I stopped answering him when he said goodbye before heading out to work.

  Mitsuru, on the other hand, he quickly showed his true face. One morning two days after I was discharged from the hospital, I ran into him in front of the bathroom. I got there a second before he did, so I put my hand on the knob to pull the door open, and he clicked his tongue and said, “Idiot. Can’t even manage to die right.” He was heartless and malicious, like Prapura said. He’d been ignoring me, so I decided to ignore him back.

  Now that I was trying to stay far away from this so-called family, I started locking myself up in Makoto’s room. I’d listen to music or the radio, read Makoto’s manga, play cards with Prapura at night. I only went downstairs for meals and then quickly scurried back to the room without eating much of anything. I barely moved, so I wasn’t hungry anyway. His family didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. Which had to mean that this was the sort of guy Makoto’d been before the suicide.

  After a few days of this routine, though, I got pretty bored. On day four, I threw in the towel. I decided it was about time for me to check out Makoto’s junior high the following day. Up to that point, I’d been off school to rest up and recover.

  The mother didn’t say anything, but it looked like she’d secretly been worried about me falling behind. Her eyes shone when I announced that I would be going to school the next day.

  I got up early for the first time in forever the next morning and scarfed down a breakfast of an egg-salad-and-tuna sandwich, not leaving a single crumb behind. I brushed my teeth, washed my face with great care, and combed my longish hair. As I stared down my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I thought about how Makoto could be a little less blah if he did something with his hair and his clothes. It’s all about what you wear and what you do with your hair, you know. But at the present moment, this boy didn’t even look right in his ugly school uniform.

  Once I’d gotten ready, I went back to Makoto’s room and checked which textbooks I should bring, schedule in one hand. I was so nervous, I’d woken up too early, so I ended up with some time to kill. It didn’t take long to set the right textbooks out, and that’s when a wave of dread washed over me.

  I walked to the window and looked down on the street out front, bright in the morning sun.

  Students who wore the same uniform as Makoto’s were walking in groups past the house.

  Two girls holding hands in a friendly way.

  A bunch of boys fooling around.

  A couple trying to look all grown-up.

  I could hear their laughter all the way up here.

  I closed the curtains and moved away from the window to sit on the edge of the bed. It was almost time to go, but my body didn’t budge. I didn’t even bother to answer the mother when she came to call me. I just sat there like a statue until finally Prapura shimmered into existence from behind the bookshelf.

  “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to be late.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “For someone to come pick me up, obviously.”

  The instant the words left my mouth, I was overcome by the utter futility of it all.

  “Listen,” I spat. “Makoto killed himself, but he survived miraculously, and he was in the hospital for a week. When he got out, he was off school for another four days. But no one came to visit. What’s that about? No phone calls, no cards, nothing. No one’s even come by to bring him his homework or notes or whatever. All of a sudden, I’ve got a lot of questions about this little situation.”

  “Unpleasant time for you to notice an unpleasant thing,” Prapura remarked, pulling an unpleasant face. “All right, listen. I’ll tell you this right now. Makoto’s suicide is not public knowledge. Only his teacher knows. As far as the other students are aware, he had a cold that turned into pneumonia.”

  “So what if they think it was pneumonia? That doesn’t change the fact that no one came to visit.” I stared into Prapura’s azure eyes, a strange blue with a hint of purple that was impossible to get sick of, the color of the sky right after the sun sets. “Here’s the thing. Nothing you tell me could possibly shock me at this point, so I want
you to be honest. Did Makoto not have any friends? Was he lonely at school, too?”

  The angel’s eyes turned the color of the night sky, telling me everything I needed to know.

  “Who knows whether or not he was lonely. Only Makoto could answer that question.” He sat down next to me, his tone unusually serious. “It’s true that he was always alone, but that could also have been because he had his own unique world.”

  “You mean he was a weirdo?” I asked, frowning.

  “There were some students who thought so, yes.” Prapura nodded. “Makoto was an introvert and a little on the naïve side. He didn’t really talk to his classmates. But really, it was more that he told himself he was that sort of person, y’know? He simply assumed that he was going to be left out, that he’d never be able to get along with anyone. He put up walls and pulled away from people.”

  “And no one gave him a second glance.”

  “No, one person did,” the angel corrected me. “There was just one kid who’d talk to him without making a big deal of it.”

  “Who?”

  “Hiroka Kuwabara.”

  His first love . . . I turned my eyes down toward the floor.

  “She was the only one who didn’t treat Makoto like he was from another planet. She was always cheerful and chatty with him. Maybe she’s just one of those people who’s like that with everyone, but for Makoto, it was special. Understand? Each and every word she spoke to him meant something.”

  “And she’s in a love hotel with an old man.” I flopped back onto the bed. “How’s that even work?”

  Seriously. A guy this unlucky was really something else. And me, too, backed against the wall and forced to take over for him, I was just as unlucky as Makoto was. This do-over of mine was looking more and more dismal.

  “If you’re going to hate someone, hate the old you who got you into this. Right now, the main thing is school. If you don’t get your butt in gear, you’re going to be late.” Prapura tried to yank me to my feet.