by Eto Mori
“Looks great, doesn’t it?” The mother turned eager eyes on me. “But I’ve learned only too well from all the courses and lessons I’ve taken that brochures are made by people who work for the places advertised, so they only ever talk about all the good parts. So I asked Mr. Sawada if there weren’t some articles or something I could have a look at. He asked the art teacher and . . .”
I ended up with these pages delivered directly to me today.
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I was planning to talk it over with you today when your dad and Mitsuru were here, too.” She sounded excessively apologetic, a pleading edge to her voice. Maybe the look on my face was scary or something. But I wasn’t angry.
Mother. Father. Mitsuru. Sawada. Mr. Amano. When I thought about how they had all been having this conversation and I’d been entirely in the dark about it, I didn’t know how exactly to react to the whole thing. To be perfectly honest, I was . . . moved.
“Go to that high school, Makoto.” Mitsuru looked right at me. “You’re a dummy and a slowpoke and a useless coward, but the one thing you’ve always been good at is art. Go and paint your heart out at this school.”
“Don’t worry about the money.” Now the father’s eyes were on me, too. “I know I asked you to try for public school, but that wasn’t so much about the money. It was more that I thought it might help you out to have some kind of goal to work toward. You just seemed so lost, heading nowhere in particular. I guess I wanted to see you working toward something instead. But if you’re going to work for something, you should work for what you love.”
“Mr. Sawada told me how the art club teacher is always saying such nice things about your paintings.” Finally, it was the mother’s turn to stare at me. “How he said that your skill was one thing, but the most important thing was how many fans you had. He said your paintings have a power to draw people in. I cried a little when I heard that.” She was tearing up now, too.
I’d never cried out so hard, so deep in my heart, as I did in that moment with all of their eyes on me.
Makoto. You really did jump the gun.
It wasn’t too late.
You rushed everything . . .
“Thanks,” I muttered, my heart pounding, and my eyes dropped to the cover of the brochure once again.
The fresh green of the trees sheltering the grounds. The smiles on the students’ faces as they walked to class in their stylish uniforms. The school itself, as massive as the Olympic stadium, rising up in the background.
“I was super surprised when I saw what was in the envelope Mr. Amano gave me,” I said. “I knew high schools like this existed, but it wasn’t like I could actually go to one, so I never bothered to check into it. I had no idea there was a school as great as this out there. I kept reading and I kept getting more and more excited. The more I learned, the more amazing it got. It’s like some kind of paradise, you know? And I started thinking how great would it be if I could go to a school like this.” I paused. “But I still want to go to a regular public high school.”
“Why?” “How come?” “What’s even in your head?” Mom, Dad, and Mitsuru blurted at the same time, and I tried to smile at them.
“It’s just, I made a promise. To Saotome. We said we’d go to high school together.”
“Saotome?”
“A friend from class.”
“You’re gonna pick a high school because of a thing like that?” Mitsuru burst out, angrily.
“It might be ‘a thing like that,’ but it’s important to me,” I told him. “He’s the first friend I’ve ever had.” I felt a lump in my throat, and even though I knew it was pathetic, I began to sob. “He’s the first friend I’ve had.”
The blurry veil of tears made the cover of the brochure shimmer and disappear. They could laugh and tell me it was totally stupid, but Saotome had told me about the 2,180-yen sneakers, and he was the most important thing in the world to me right now.
“The truth is, I think I was probably afraid. I wasn’t refusing to take entrance exams. It was more like I didn’t have the confidence to survive in high school.”
Although I was still really upset and crying my eyes out, I kept trying to speak from my heart.
“I tripped up in junior high. I probably got off to a bad start. Everyone else took a step forward, but I just couldn’t. Once I was late taking that first step, my rhythm got all messed up, and it made it even harder to move at all. Everyone in class kept pushing forward, leaving me behind, and my body got stiffer and stiffer until nothing was working at all anymore.”
Right. That’s probably how it went.
As I thought about Makoto’s sorrow at being left behind, my voice got more and more hoarse.
“But some people stop and take a look back to check for you, like Saotome did. Maybe I’m just a simple guy, but it made me so happy when he did. It’s like, suddenly, I felt I had a life. Like, I made friends with Saotome, so maybe I’m a person who can make friends, just like everyone else. Maybe I can make one friend at a time, bring them into my life one by one. I started to feel like I might actually be okay in high school. Even if I’m a little late taking that first step again, I can catch up without getting lost and panicking about it. Walking to school with a big group of friends, messing around, taking a detour on the way home—I want to do really simple things in high school. That’s it, totally normal stuff.”
I wanted to give the real Makoto this extraordinary average high school life. I wanted it from the bottom of my heart, as I pressed my hands against my teary eyes.
Makoto’s loneliness.
His fear.
His desires.
I knew them better than anyone else.
“Are you sure?” The father leaned forward. “I know you love art. This is a chance to really go all in on it.”
I nodded. “I’ll join the art club in high school. I paint because I love it. That’s where I’m at right now. I haven’t thought any further ahead than that about committing to art or making it into a career.”
I felt bad for the mother after she’d gone all the way out there to take a look at the school. But even if, hypothetically, I did have a long future left to me, I figured it wouldn’t be too late to start studying art as a major in university.
When I’d finished talking, silence fell around the dinner table. The only sound I could hear was the rattling of the windows in the wind and the tic toc of the clock carving out time. The mother, the father, and Mitsuru said nothing. They just sat and stared at me. But they didn’t have to speak. I knew from those quiet gazes that they understood and accepted my decision.
“I’m starving.” Mitsuru was the first to speak.
“Okay, let’s eat. How about we all have a drink today?” the father suggested, a grin spreading across his round face. “You, too, Makoto. You’re a grown-up now.”
And so the matter of which high school I’d attend was settled. We agreed that I would try for public school like I decided, and just in case, I’d also take the exam for one private school as a backup. However they felt about the high school thing, though, the family seemed most pleased with the fact that I’d shared my feelings with them for the first time.
Of course, these were my feelings, not those of the real Makoto. At best, they were the feelings I imagined Makoto would have. The love the three of them were showering on me should have been directed at Makoto. It didn’t belong to me.
Is it really okay like this?
Doubt started to really pick at me when I went back up to Makoto’s room to study for the exams, after hanging out with the father for a bit while he had his dinner drink.
As my relationship with my host family got better, I grew more and more tangled up in these guilty thoughts. I wanted to go to high school in Makoto’s place, I wanted to make friends, I wanted to paint. The stronger these desires got, the more I felt like I needed to apologize to the real Makoto. After all, right from the get-go, it was impossible for someone to waltz in
and live someone else’s life.
As long as I was me, the Kobayashi family would never know a real happy ending. All I could give them was a fake, a substitute joy. A fleeting one at that, with an expiration date.
Once I started thinking like this, I couldn’t get anywhere with my studies, and if I tried going to bed, I wouldn’t be able to sleep either.
Midnight. An in-between nowhere time.
To try to clear my mind, I headed down to the kitchen to make some coffee. When I walked by the living room, the lights were still shining brightly on the other side of the sliding door. So I stopped and casually peeked through the gap to find the mother’s back still at the table.
“Oh!” She hurriedly swept something off the table to hide it in her lap when she noticed me. “Makoto, you’re still up studying?” She looked flustered, like a student caught cheating.
Something was up. But whatever. I wasn’t interested in what she was doing. I started to take a step forward and then abruptly changed my mind, took a step back, and popped my head into the living room.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Hm?” She looked at me.
“I know you went to the trouble of getting that brochure and stuff for me.”
She gaped for an instant and then smiled like a fog suddenly melting away. “It’s fine. I never dreamed you were thinking things over this seriously. So I just went and stuck my nose in your business. I should be the one saying sorry.”
With a wry smile, I set my feet in motion once more.
“Wait!” she called out from the other side of the sliding doors. “Could you come in for a minute?”
When I entered the room as requested and came to stand by her, she bashfully returned the thing she had hidden in her lap to the tabletop. It was a flimsy two-color pamphlet. The cover read, “You can do it, too! Fun and exciting finger puppet theater.”
Fun and exciting finger puppet theater?
“Well . . . This woman I know runs a finger puppet troupe, and this is their pamphlet.” The mother started to explain, looking extremely awkward. “I guess they volunteer to go around senior homes once a month. The other day, she asked me if I wanted to come join them. Of course, I said no at first. I’d only just decided I was going to dedicate my life to you boys. Not to mention that it’s a rough period for you right now, what with the entrance exams and all. But she begged and pleaded, said they don’t have anywhere near enough people right now. And looking at the pamphlet, I—well, I don’t know how to put it . . . I don’t know for sure, of course, but I started to get this feeling like maybe I was meant to be a finger puppeteer. It’s strange.”
I thought it was a whole lot stranger the way she went from zero to sixty like that, but I kept my mouth shut and my exasperation to myself.
“Honestly, I wonder why I’m like this.” It seemed she was exasperated with herself, too. “I wonder if I’m still looking for that special something way down there in the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what I could possibly hope to find now at my age, but I still can’t stop looking. Aah, I’m so fed up with it myself. It’s like a kind of greed or maybe just stubbornness.”
Apparently, she had spent some time reflecting on herself and her actions, but the way she didn’t seem to actually process any of it was a blind spot of hers.
“It’s not greedy or stubborn or anything.” I’d been secretly thinking this for a while, and now I let it all out. “It’s not such a big deal as all that. You just get bored really easily. That’s it.”
“What?” Her eyes widened as though this was real news to her. “I never thought about it like that.” She was honestly astounded, and I could see her now not so much as a disgusting grown-up but actually more of an indiscriminate, capricious child. I had a hard time reconciling her with this new character, and I still couldn’t shake the disgust I felt when I pictured her in the real with that flamenco teacher.
But maybe if I had more time.
A year, three years, five.
If the hours kept being stacked one on top of the other . . .
No, either way, that wasn’t my part to play.
It was in that moment that I finally came to a decision about a certain something I’d been mulling over, something that had kept me scratching my head for a while, going in circles and coming to no real conclusions.
“So why don’t you do the finger puppet thing?” I said, casually. “Just don’t go quitting halfway through and causing trouble for everyone else.”
“What?” She stared up at me. “You’re okay with it?”
I shrugged. “It’s none of my business. And I guess this is what Dad likes about you.”
Her eyes shone, and I didn’t forget to offer up a warning at the same time.
“Just don’t lie to him anymore. A guy like that.”
“You’re right.” The mother nodded, solemnly. “But for all that, your dad used to be quite the philanderer, you know.”
“What?”
“Oh, this was before you boys were born. But on three separate occasions, his lovers came to me to ask me to leave him.”
I was speechless. It goes without saying that I retreated in low spirits.
“Prapura.” I ended up going back to my room without making coffee, and now I sat on the edge of the bed and called up to the ceiling. “Please come. I’ve got something important to talk about.”
I was sure he would show himself now. I just got that feeling.
“So what’s so important?”
Bingo.
Prapura popped into existence at my desk. In a beige suit, dressed to the nines as usual.
“It’s been a long time, huh?” I greeted the angel—or devil—sarcastically. “Any longer, and I would’ve forgotten what you look like.”
“You just don’t need a guide anymore,” Prapura replied, smoothly. “You’re familiar enough with your homestay family now. It’s a good thing. I’m not your hairstylist, I’m not here for hair consultations, you know.”
“What about serious consultations?”
“Depends on what it is,” he sniffed.
“I want to give the real Makoto back to the people in this family,” I said, calmly. My heart was certain now. “I want to give him back to them.”
This was the end of the road for me. I did feel a twinge of regret, but this was the only way they were going to get their happy ending.
“I figured it was getting time for you to say that.” The corners of his mouth slid briefly upward, but then he quickly grew serious again. “And there just might be a way to call back the soul of Makoto Kobayashi. You’ve been doing pretty well lately, and my boss is in top spirits. No one’s really fussing over the details in this world, so he just might be open to the idea of a special exception. There’s just one problem, however.”
“And what’s that?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“You’re in the way,” Prapura announced, breezily. “In order for Makoto’s soul to return to that body, yours would first have to leave it. And for you to leave it, you must remember the mistake you made in your past life.”
“Oh!” I cried.
My mistake in my past life. Right, right, that was the rule here, wasn’t it.
“I see you forgot about that.” The angel glared at me. “Whatever. Just remember now. All the details. Get back to me with the mistake from your past life within the next twenty-four hours.”
“The next twenty-four hours?”
“If you pass this little test, I’ll bring it up with the boss for you. You return safely to the cycle of rebirth, Makoto Kobayashi’s soul returns to that body. Hooray, huzzah, everyone’s happy. But if you take even a single minute more than twenty-four hours, all your efforts will have been in vain. You’ll never get another chance to call Makoto’s soul back.”
“Hang on a sec,” I said, trying to push back the panic in my heart. “I’ll try, I promise. I’ll try, but . . . but why within twenty-four hours?”
&nbs
p; “The number doesn’t have any particular meaning. It’s just more exciting with a time limit.” He grinned.
“Exciting for who?” I glared at him.
“Me and my boss.”
“Go to hell,” I snapped, and dropped my head in my hands.
I glanced at the clock by my bed out of the corner of my eye—12:35 a.m. There was no way I was going to figure it out by this time tomorrow. I hadn’t found so much as a vague hint after nearly four months of this.
“Don’t go giving up before you’ve even started,” Prapura said, his smile slightly restrained in the face of my despair. “Open your eyes. Really look. There are hints all over the place.” He popped out of existence.
Hints all over the place?
14
Makoto’s room. Ivory walls. Ceiling with a few spots here and there. The white light of the fluorescent bulb. The sky-blue rug reflecting this light.
South wall. Bay window and desk. I opened the drawers, but I couldn’t find anything resembling a hint. The first drawer was full of pens and things. The second was notebooks. The third was a game console and a bunch of junk. Plus the porn.
East wall. Small bookshelf. Manga, a few art books by my favorite artists. Dictionary, textbooks, reference books. Fairy tales with faded covers made an appearance, too. Plus four thick photo albums. I flipped through the one to the far left, and there was a little Makoto, his smiling face cherubic. He was so tiny and surprisingly cute. He didn’t know yet that he was fated to be tiny forever.
Northeastern corner. A dresser of light pinewood. The clothes inside were neatly sorted. Shabby street wear in the top drawer. The farther down the dresser, the newer the clothes got. The very bottom drawer even had a red shirt tucked away inside with the price tag still attached. Maybe he wanted to change his image, but in the end, this was just too flashy for him.
North wall. Completely taken up by the bed. And underneath this, the secret boots slept in secret. I knew I would never wear them, but I wasn’t quite ready to let go. Could the secret boots have been a hint? Probably not.