by Eto Mori
“But Makoto.” The father picked up the baton. “Why don’t you give it a go at least? You do the best you can, and we’ll manage the rest somehow. I’d like to see you get in the ring and really fight for something.”
Whoa, whoa. Here we go with the fighting again. Fight. Fight. Why did this word make me feel so lifeless?
“Well, I’ll think about it,” I said, and hurried back to my room.
Give the public school exam a go . . .
I flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ivory ceiling. It wasn’t like I desperately wanted to go to any particular private school, unlike Mitsuru with his clear goal of medicine. If there wasn’t the money for it, then I figured I was basically stuck with sitting for the public school exam. The real issue was how long I’d be doing this homestay anyway. What if I studied my butt off only to say goodbye to Makoto’s body before I got to go to the school I’d worked so hard to get into? The mere thought of it sank me to the bottom of a gloomy pit.
“Makoto, do you have a moment? I’m coming in,” I heard the mother say from the bottom of my pit. Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door and came waltzing right in. “Sorry for bringing the entrance exams up out of nowhere like this.”
I had hurriedly dived under my duvet and felt her come to a stop somewhere near my feet.
“But this is something we’ve really thought long and hard about. Your dad and I’ve discussed it a bunch of times. And we even asked your teacher Mr. Sawada for his opinion.”
“Sawada?” Why was she bringing up Sawada?
“We wanted to consider every possibility. We were worried this might push you up against the edge again.”
The mother sounded unusually tense, and it finally clicked. Makoto had only just come back from the brink of death, and they didn’t know why he’d tried to kill himself. She was afraid it might have been because he’d been worried about the high school entrance exam.
“But I had a hunch. No matter what kind of problems you have, studying’s the one thing you’re not too concerned about.” Her voice softened slightly. “After all, you’ve never cared about your grades, not a whit, not since you were little. It never mattered to you if you got a great score on a test or if you failed it. And your class ranking’s never bothered you. You’ve always hated competing, haven’t you? At field day at school, you always looked a little sad, whether you won or lost the race. The only time you were honestly happy about winning was when you were playing cards. You’re just like that. So I knew it wasn’t your studies that was weighing on you. Of course, I couldn’t say for sure, one hundred percent, but Mr. Sawada told me, too, it’s the overachievers who end up snapping before entrance exams.”
As I listened to her, I felt this warm closeness toward Makoto. Maybe he’d also hated the word fight. The sweat, the tears, the victory! The idea that you had no choice but to push yourself, go above and beyond in some match you didn’t even care about.
“It’s fine. I’ll take the public school exam. For your information, I didn’t try to kill myself because of entrance exams or anything.” I sat up, still hidden under the duvet. “You should look to your own heart if you want to know why I tried to commit suicide.” I always ended up running my mouth off when I saw the mother.
“What do you mean?” Her face clouded over.
“I told you. Ask your own self.”
“I can’t know unless you tell me.”
“Then think about it until you figure it out.”
“I’ve thought about it. I can’t stop thinking about it!” Her shadow suddenly twisted across the rug. “Makoto. Please. Talk to me. You don’t have to carry this all by yourself. Your dad said we should wait until you came to us and opened up on your own, but I just can’t wait anymore. Please. Tell me what happened. What was so hard for you? What was so bad you wanted to die? What happened? I’m going to have a nervous breakdown myself if we keep not talking about it!” she yelled hysterically.
Those dark circles under her eyes, she acts like she’s the victim here, I thought, and I lost it. “Okay. Then I’ll tell you.”
Stop! I heard Prapura roar angrily in my head, but I couldn’t pull back now.
“How’s your flamenco teacher doing?” I looked up at her and grinned.
Like a frost falling on a winter night, her face froze, eyelids first, then cheeks, lips—all trace of movement stopped. Her eyes alone darted about. This was the reaction of someone who was painfully aware of exactly what I was talking about.
I knew it. I got to my feet and slipped past her to dig into my closet. I yanked on the black hoodie Makoto’s savings had paid for and made for the front door, wallet in one hand. I looked back as I was about to leave the room and saw her bent over crying, her shoulders shaking.
It was raining when I stepped outside. The droplets that hit my cheeks were cold enough to make me shiver. Now that I thought about it, I’d been feeling a little feverish since that morning, like I was coming down with a cold or something. But I kept on walking, umbrella in one hand.
The moonless and starless November night looked pathetic somehow, like the boss up there had made a mistake.
“You’re the pathetic one.” Prapura abruptly popped into existence next to me. He was brandishing a frilly white parasol that totally did not go with his classy trench coat.
Of course this is what angels are into.
“Distributed by the boss. I would never buy an umbrella like this myself,” Prapura said, glaring at me. “At any rate, I’m more interested in what you’re trying to do here. Is it your intent to destroy Makoto’s family?”
“I’m just saying what Makoto couldn’t before he died,” I replied. I was honestly fed up with all of this shit. “The more I find out about him, the clearer it is to me that he was lost, he was so unlucky. He was shy and quiet, and then he died without saying a word to anyone. But I’m different. I’m sure I was a serial killer, or a robber, or a total piece of garbage in my past life. If that’s what I was, I’ve got nothing to lose now. I’m going to do all the things Makoto couldn’t.”
“Ooh-hoo, amazing. So you’re a superhero now.” Prapura whistled, but all the while, his eyes on me were harsh. “However, are you really doing this for Makoto’s sake? Or is it actually all for yourself? After all, you find Makoto dull and unappealing, you don’t like his family. Nothing’s going the way you want, and now you’re being forced to actually study for the entrance exams. You’re angry. You’re taking it out on his mother. And now you’re standing here telling me it’s all for Makoto?”
“Shut up!” I threw my umbrella to the ground and walked faster.
“Wait! Hey!” Prapura scooped my umbrella up and came after me. “All I’m saying is not to jump to conclusions, okay? The Makoto everyone says was so shy and quiet might not have been the real Makoto. Maybe they all went and decided that without really knowing him at all, who knows. Maybe they just pushed him into that box, forced him to wear that label. The same thing applies to you, whether you were a serial killer and all that in your past life, you shouldn’t rush to conclusions. There are all kinds of mistakes, after all.”
My head felt like lead and throbbed with pain. Prapura might as well have been speaking Greek for all the sense he was making to me right now. I kept walking, silent.
“Hey! Where are you going?” he shouted after me.
“What’s it to you?”
“You don’t even know where you’re going.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Listen, you need to go home.”
“You go home. Back up there.”
“I have a duty as your guide.”
“So then guide me.” I stopped in my tracks. “Guide me to Hiroka Kuwabara.”
Once I had this amazing idea, my headache conveniently went away. “Seriously. I’m begging you. I really need to see her face. I want to hear her voice. I won’t ask you to show me her changing or anything like that.”
Prapura looked thoughtful and not pa
rticularly inclined to do me any favors.
“I don’t mind guiding you,” he said, finally, pity in his eyes. “But if you see her tonight, you’ll only end up hurt—a little at the very least.”
“Hurt?”
“Like Makoto Kobayashi was.”
“Oh.”
The night got about five degrees colder as I guessed at what Prapura meant. I felt like I was suffocating, like a hand of ice had my heart in its grip. Maybe there was no way for me to escape the fate that bound Makoto. But even still . . .
“Even still, I’m not like Makoto.” I took a deep breath. “I’m not as weak as he was.”
Prapura’s face was shadowed gray beneath the black and white umbrellas.
I snatched the black one from his hand and marched ahead. “Let’s go.”
I wanted to know the truth about Hiroka Kuwabara, however awful and painful.
5
Get on a bus at the nearby stop, ride it for twenty minutes. Walk ten minutes from the station where it finishes its trip. A small café called Lullaby stands in one corner of an obscenely neon-lit backstreet. After Prapura told me that that’s where I’d find Hiroka Kuwabara, I went on the hunt, doubtful that a place with a name this outdated even existed in this day and age. But I found it surprisingly quickly.
Hiroka was walking out the door when I came across the café sign around nine p.m. I saw a bluish shadow on the other side of the purple glass of the automatic door, and then it slid aside to reveal her wearing a dark green jacket and looking very grown-up. Behind her was a middle-aged man, maybe in his forties or fifties. At a glance, he looked like your average businessman, in the usual crisp suit and tie. The corners of his eyes turned downward the same way Hiroka’s did. So maybe he really was her dad.
It was ludicrous that I was still thinking like this at this stage of the game, and as if to strike the final blow and banish all illusion from my heart, Hiroka and the old man stepped into the narrow alley and headed toward an even more suspiciously secluded area.
I followed them, hiding my face with my umbrella. Just like Makoto had gone after them a few days before his suicide. And then, just like that night, they stopped in front of a love hotel. European-themed with white walls. At first glance, it looked like any other hotel in the city center.
The man seemed perfectly healthy, full of energy like he was raring to go, and sadly looked nothing like a dad feeling poorly. He had an arm wrapped around Hiroka’s shoulders and was casually leading her toward the hotel entrance.
I didn’t want to just stand there in shock like Makoto had, so I took a deep breath and stepped forward. The man walked into the hotel first, leaving Hiroka to fold up her umbrella in front of the door. In that mere millisecond of an opening, I dashed over and snatched her away.
“Run!” I shouted, holding her wrist tightly, and started to run whether she liked it or not. I tossed away my umbrella and headed for the main street at full speed, not caring a bit how this must look.
Hiroka squealed and struggled at first, but at some point, she realized that I was her kidnapper. “Ohh, honestly, Makoto,” she said, blithely, and then obediently trotted along behind me.
We left the secluded area of the love hotel and raced down the back alleys until we finally arrived at a bright shopping street. I found a twenty-four-hour doughnut shop and pushed Hiroka inside.
“Can I get a coconut doughnut?” She turned her puppy dog eyes on me.
“Have whatever you want, just order!” I snapped.
Tray in hand, I rushed us up to the second floor, which was practically deserted, maybe due to the late hour. I sat us down at a table in a corner where we wouldn’t stand out and finally paused to take a breath.
“Haah.” Unconsciously, I stretched out across the top of the table. I was panting, my heart was pounding, and the rain had melted away the hair mousse, leaving my bangs plastered to my forehead.
“Oh, Makoto! You look like one of those kappa monsters with their terrible bowl cuts!” Hiroka squealed, carrying on like she was having the best time of her life. Even though she was soaked to the skin just like I was, she looked more like a mermaid lounging on the shore. But this was no time to be dumbstruck by her beauty.
“What the hell? I mean, seriously.” Adrenaline still pumping through my veins, I pressed her for answers. “What were you doing with that old man?”
If I’d taken half a second to cool off and actually think about it, I would have known the answer to that question without having to ask it at all. Looking at anything but the reality that was right in front of my nose, I just wanted Hiroka to say it was all a misunderstanding—I’d happily accept the dad theory or anything else for that matter.
She smiled as she played with her wet hair. “He’s my lover,” she said, like she was telling me the time of day. She reached out for her coconut doughnut and said, “He sorta came up to me one day an’ asked me to be his lover, y’know? So we negotiated a price an’ stuff an’ here we are!”
“Price?” Completely floored, I leaned into the table and cradled my head in my hands, at my wits’ end.
I told you, didn’t I? I could almost hear Prapura sighing.
Underneath the dark green jacket, Hiroka wore a tight black knit dress. A gold necklace glittered in the light just above the plunging neckline, and a pair of black lace-up boots finished her outfit off. She was gorgeous, an air of sophistication drifting about her. It was enough to make the 28,000-yen sneakers on my own feet look sad and washed out. But the thought that she’d chosen every bit of it to look good for that old man made me want to rip it all off and throw it out the window.
She was even wearing a bit of makeup. Her eyebrows were neatly shaped, and her sleepy, single-lidded eyes were painted in pearl eye shadow. The tinted pink balm that adorned her lips made them look much fuller, so that they were all the more voluptuous.
The idea that she would use those lips, those eyes, that immature body to earn money from a man old enough to be her father—it couldn’t be true.
While I tried to pull myself together, I merely watched as Hiroka polished off the coconut doughnut.
“Everything I want’s expensive, y’know?” She began to talk, sounding more like she wanted to placate me than to make excuses for what she was doing. “Pretty clothes, bags, rings, all those nice things I want are super expensive. Even if I tried to save up my allowance, okay? Even if I saved up for a whole year, I could never buy any of them. I mean, it’s all so wildly expensive that I really wonder how they could even cost that much money at all! But if I do it with him three or four times, boom, I can buy whatever I want.” She giggled, gleefully.
What on earth could I even say to this cherubic prostitute laughing as she licked bits of coconut powder off her fingers?
“What’s wrong, Makoto?” Hiroka smiled innocently, utterly oblivious to how I felt in that moment. “You’re all spaced out.”
“I really don’t get it, you know?” I muttered. “You can’t seriously like it, though, right?”
“It?” She raised a neat eyebrow.
“Like, with an old guy like that . . .” Sex! The sex part! I hated to even imagine it.
“Mmm.” She kept smiling brightly, innocently cheerful. “I was grossed out by the idea at first, but I guess I’m used to it now. Or maybe it’s more like we have this sort of chemistry now. I like doing it now. And he’s a pretty nice guy. I really got lucky.”
“Lucky?” Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow.
“It’s hit or miss, you know. From what I hear from other girls I think I got really lucky with this guy. He’s super generous, and like, even when we’re doing it, he—”
“Stop.” My voice was unexpectedly rough. “Not interested.” Don’t tell me any more.
To calm myself down a bit, I took a sip of my cold hot chocolate. It was sickly sweet and tasted terrible. Apparently, a lot of things in this world were hit or miss. Makoto’s first love was a colossal miss, but even so, I still couldn�
��t bring myself to hate her.
“Hiroka,” I said, once I’d more or less pulled myself together. “You really want beautiful clothes and rings and stuff that bad?”
“Yes.” She nodded, firmly. “There’s nothing else I want.”
“You want it all so bad you’d sleep with an old guy like that?”
“I do.”
“Can you wait until you’re a grown-up?” I was almost pleading with her now. “Until you can earn money properly?”
“I can’t! How could I wait?” Her voice grew thorny for the first time. “I mean, what about you? Could you wait until you’re a grown-up for those sneakers? They look expensive.”
I gulped and looked down at my feet. The famous brand name glittered and shone on the blue sneakers marked with flashy yellow stripes down the sides.
“For real, Makoto, tell me. You think you’re gonna want to wear those when you’re like, thirty or forty or something?”
“Uh . . .” Uh-uh, not at all.
“That’s how I feel. I want it all right now, the beautiful clothes, the bags, the rings. Who cares when I’m a grown-up? I mean, once I’m an old lady, my body’ll be worthless. And if my body’s worthless, then what’s even the point of buying pretty things? When I get so old that only aprons and granny shirts look good on me, then I’ll be a good girl and wear the aprons and shirts,” Hiroka announced proudly, completely sure of herself, and thrust her chin out defiantly.
To get things that were worth something for the person she was now with a body that was worth something now—she had clearly never even considered the idea that there could be anything wrong with this.
“I want to wear beautiful clothes today and I want to feel beautiful every day. Like, this outfit? He gave it to me. It’s gorgeous, right? Black’s my favorite color. When I’m wearing my favorite clothes, I’m so unbelievably happy that I even feel this sort of unconditional love for the entire human race.”
For some reason, I had a hard time looking directly at her dressed all in black and brimming with confidence. It was true that with her fair skin, black looked really good on her. But, Hiroka. That old man bought you those clothes not so you could dress up in them, but so he could get you out of them.