Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  Who cares if I’m smart? Why are you always trying to change the subject?

  “Satoru told you, didn’t he?”

  Wataru was silent.

  “Your grandmother? Not your mother, surely.”

  Wataru jerked his head upward. “I won’t tell you unless you tell me if it’s true or not.”

  Akira sighed.

  The usual bustle had returned to the fountain square. All these people have no idea what we’re talking about. Everyone in the world is happy. Everyone except us.

  “It is true,” Akira said.

  The words shot by Wataru, still falling, and disappeared above him. They weren’t falling—he had fallen by them. Now he saw they had grown wings, and were flying up into the sky, happy.

  “I’m going to start a new life with this woman. If your mother agrees to a divorce, I intend to marry her.”

  The rumble of tank treads sounded in Wataru’s fears. “Grandma’s pretty mad. She’ll never go for it.”

  To Wataru’s surprise, Akira laughed. “Of course she won’t. One phone call was enough to convince me of that. She told me I wasn’t a father anymore—or her son. Your grandmother disowned me.”

  “Disowned? What’s that?”

  “That means we officially stop being a parent and child.”

  “So you’re not Grandma’s son anymore? And Uncle Lou…does this make him not my uncle anymore?”

  Akira’s mouth curled into a grim smile. “No, Grandma didn’t really disown me. But she was mad enough to say she would.”

  “And Grandma being so mad doesn’t make you think twice about your decision? Do you think you’re doing the right thing?”

  Akira looked into Wataru’s eyes. “Do you think it’s the right thing to abandon your convictions because someone close to you gets angry?”

  “Abandon your convictions? You mean change your mind?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Convictions are very important decisions, the kind you can’t go back on.”

  So abandoning me and Mom was an important decision.

  “So what are your convictions, Dad. I mean, Mom is really sad, and Grandma’s furious, and all Uncle Lou does is hold his head in his hands and moan. How can convictions be worth all that?”

  An elderly couple eating ice cream on the bench next to them had caught a snippet of the conversation and were now peering at them with interest. Akira shot them a withering glare. The two looked at each other and resumed licking their cones.

  “What are my convictions?” Akira echoed. “You need to know?”

  “Yeah,” Wataru said firmly, but inside he was frightened. He had backed his father into this and now he was treading on unknown territory. He was trying to open a door that shouldn’t be opened. If only there were a strategy guide for this, like for a role-playing game. A powerful, secret boss lies in wait behind this door. If you’re under level fifty, it’s best to sneak past.

  “Your father’s conviction,” Akira said slowly, “is that you only live once.”

  You only live once.

  “That’s why, if you think you’ve made a mistake, no matter how much you struggle, how much difficulty you face, you have to fix what can be fixed. There’s no time for regrets.”

  He spoke slowly, saying every word with the proper weight, but the only one that stuck in Wataru’s head was mistake.

  Dad’s life was a mistake.

  So…what does that make me?

  “Are you saying it was a mistake for you to marry Mom? So what about me? Does that make me a mistake too? Is that what you mean?”

  Akira shook his head. “No that’s not what I mean. I’m not saying that.”

  “Then what was your mistake? I don’t get it.”

  “Look, this isn’t something you can understand right now. Maybe when you’re older, when you’ve lived through some of the things I have. Maybe then you’ll understand. Though I’m not sure understanding will make you happy.”

  Wataru was getting lost in a maze that grew more and more complicated with every word said. His father’s explanations always made so much sense. Even when things seemed tangled beyond belief, his father would untangle them, and lay them out flat for all to see.

  But this time it was exactly the opposite. Things were simple. Dad left Mom, he left me—he left our house. He wants to marry another woman. It’s that simple. So why does the explanation seem so complicated?

  Akira reached out a hand and lightly held Wataru’s shoulder. Rocking him slowly back and forth, he spoke. “There’s one thing I want you to remember. No matter what mistakes your mother and I have made, no matter what our failures, it has nothing to do with you. You are your own person. Haven’t I always told you that? A child has his own personality; he’s not just an attachment to his parents. Even if our marriage has failed, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. That’s the truth. Never forget it.”

  Akira’s brow furrowed. “If you lift your head and look our marriage in the face, you will see it for what it is. Failures are failures. Ours was a mistake from the very beginning. We were just kidding ourselves the whole time.”

  Mom always kept the house clean. She always made dinner. She hardly ever slept late. She fought with Grandma sometimes, but they always made up afterward.

  “Mom hasn’t done anything bad. She didn’t make a mistake,” Wataru muttered. Then he noticed that amazingly, incredibly, his father’s calm demeanor had faded and was replaced by a look of outright irritation. When he spoke the words came in a rush, like he was trying to push something back down in its place by sheer force.

  “Failure doesn’t mean anyone did anything bad. Sometimes people fail even when they only do good things. Or they do what they think is good. Only with hindsight can anyone understand the failures they experience.”

  The lady on the next bench over had stopped licking her ice cream to stare at them. She was oblivious to the melting rivulet of vanilla coursing off the edge of her cone and staining her skirt.

  The old man grunted and nudged her with his elbow. “You’re dripping.”

  Flustered, the woman brushed at her skirt. Wataru watched the scene unfold blankly. You can hear what we’re saying, can’t you? Do you understand? Could you translate for me? What is my father trying to say?

  “I don’t understand,” Wataru said meekly, to which Akira nodded.

  “I didn’t think you would. You don’t have to. This was my mistake…and I think meeting you today was a mistake too. I can’t explain it so you’ll understand, I’m just hurting you. See? That’s what I mean.”

  “That’s what I mean” was his father’s code for “this conversation is over.” How many times had his questions about everything under the sun been answered, tips been given, advice handed out with those words.

  A sigh came out unbidden. He felt like he had been holding his breath this whole time. Like he had swum the length of an Olympic-size pool underwater and only just now reached the edge, his lungs burning.

  He breathed, and the reality of it hit him. Then, just like that, the thing he had been thinking from the very beginning came welling up and popped out of his mouth. “So basically, you just like this other woman more than Mom. That’s what this is all about, right?”

  His father did not answer. Brow furrowed, he tapped his glasses with a finger and looked down at the ground.

  Spray from the fountain fell lightly on Wataru’s forehead.

  “If that’s what you want to think, fine. Think that,” Akira said. He stood up to leave. “I’ll walk you to the bus stop.”

  “No, that’s okay. I want to stay here awhile.”

  “Don’t sulk, Wataru.”

  “I’m not sulking. I just want to go to the library.”

  “I can’t leave you here alone after all we’ve talked about.”

  “I’m fine. I can make it home myself.”

  Just go home, Dad. I’ll be fine. Just go back to your woman. The one who isn’t a mistake.

  Wataru didn’t meet
his father’s gaze again that day.

  Akira stood quietly in front of the hard bench where Wataru sat staring at the ground in uneasy silence.

  The wind is blowing water from the fountain and it’s cold. I can hear a girl laughing. I hear a baby crying.

  “Wataru…This idea to meet me—was this your idea alone?”

  “Katchan helped me.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Um, did you come up with the idea yourself?”

  Wataru looked up. Funny, he looks scared. “What do you mean?”

  Akira’s lips curled, as he searched for the proper words. He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked away. “Did your mother send you here to do this?”

  Wataru didn’t catch what he said. “Huh?”

  “Did your mother tell you to meet with me and ask me to come home?”

  Wataru’s mouth gaped open. “No, not at all.”

  “Okay.” Akira nodded, still frowning. “That’s fine. If your mother had put you up to this…if she was trying to use you, that would be bad. You understand? I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Mom wouldn’t do that.” She wants me to pretend you’re on a business trip. “She doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Akira’s shoulders relaxed. He seemed relieved.

  “It’s the truth, Dad.”

  “Right, I understand. Well, I’m going now. You take care of yourself, and go straight home.” He began to walk off, then paused. “Call me on my cell phone anytime. If you want to talk, just call. Even if it’s just about homework. Anything.”

  Wataru sat alone, staring off into space when he heard a tiny voice. He was too tired to actually focus on it, to hear what it was saying.

  “Sonny?”

  He felt a light tap on his shoulder and looked up to see the old lady who had been sitting on the bench next to him. He saw the dark stains of the ice cream in the fabric of her skirt. She was plump, and bent over to the point where she was only about as tall as Wataru. She crouched by the bench and smiled a faint smile. “Where do you live, sonny?”

  Wataru was empty. An old shopping bag turned upside down. His voice had fallen out a long time ago to clatter on the floor.

  “We could take you home?” she offered.

  Behind her Wataru could see her husband sitting on the bench, frowning. Then Wataru’s mouth opened, and the sound that came out was alien to him, flat, like a synthesized voice.

  “No, I’m going to the library.”

  “You sure, sonny? You live far from here?”

  Wataru repeated himself, then stood.

  “Leave him alone,” the old man said to his wife. “He can take care of himself.”

  The lady grabbed her husband’s shirt by the sleeve. “But aren’t you worried?” Wataru heard her saying. “He’s so young…”

  He left them and began to walk toward the library building. “Oh, sonny!” the old lady called out. “How about some ice cream?”

  He could hear her husband scolding her, but their voices were already fading into the distance as he walked away. All but one sentence he heard as clearly as if the old man had been talking right in his ear.

  “I knew there were irresponsible fathers in the world, but that was my first time seeing one.”

  The old woman grumbled something about men, but Wataru was already too far away.

  He wasn’t falling anymore. He had gone down as far as he could go, and now he had hit rock bottom. He was so far down he didn’t know where he was.

  Chapter 11

  The Secret

  If somebody had later asked Wataru how he had spent the next several days before summer vacation began, he would have given them a blank stare and said nothing. He was in a daze. Details blurred and faded in the space of hours. Those days, he lived for nothing, and did even less.

  Not that there was much of a change in his daily routine. Uncle Lou visited again and they hammered out the details for his summer trip. Late in the evening, he saw him speaking in hushed tones with his mother, but he wasn’t told what they were discussing, or whether they had reached any conclusions.

  Kuniko settled into the exact same patterns she followed when Akira was on one of his long business trips. In that respect, what she told Wataru wasn’t exactly a lie. They would watch TV together at night and laugh, and if Wataru went to bed without brushing his teeth, she would get angry at him, as always. When Katchan called after nine o’clock at night, she would say, “He has to understand. Our family isn’t run like his family.” It was the exact same thing she always said. No special treatment. Same old Mom.

  When Wataru woke up in the morning before the last day of school, his right cheek was swollen and red. It hurt so much he could barely open his mouth. His mother took a look. “Your gum’s swollen,” she announced. “You need to go see a dentist. No school for you today.”

  Not that it really mattered—the classes for the year were pretty much over, and he wouldn’t be able to get in the pool for P.E. in his condition anyway. Wataru did as he was told, and before lunchtime rolled around, he was sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office.

  It wasn’t a cavity, said the dentist, it was gingivitis. “Don’t normally see this in children,” he said, and asked whether Wataru had eaten something hard recently, maybe cut his gum? Had his mom said anything about him grinding his teeth at night?

  The dentist fixed him up, and though the swelling didn’t go down, the pain wasn’t so bad. He was told there was a chance that he might run a fever, and sure enough, he was starting to shiver. Even under the hot summer sun he didn’t break a sweat.

  He got home to find his mother out shopping. There was a note on the kitchen table that read, “Put on your new pajamas and get some sleep.”

  He wasn’t that sick. A quick snooze on the couch sounded like a better idea. He had just flopped down when the phone rang.

  Maybe it’s Grandma? Or Uncle Lou. Or it could even be Grandma in Odawara. The last time she called she started crying right away. Wataru didn’t fancy the idea of talking to her right then.

  Reluctantly he picked up the receiver. He heard a woman’s voice, unfamiliar, maybe a salesperson.

  “Hello, Kuniko Mitani?”

  He tried to tell the caller that his mother wasn’t home, but the swelling in his mouth and the lingering effects of the anesthesia made it hard to say anything coherent. Meanwhile, the woman on the line continued talking.

  “I heard from a colleague that you called the office yesterday. I thought we agreed last time that you wouldn’t call here…did you forget, perhaps?”

  It was a pretty and polite voice, but Wataru could hear a little bit of anger simmering beneath the surface. She was talking a little too high, a little too fast. What kind of a salesperson talks like this?

  “…This sort of, well, harassment—look, I’m human too, and there’s only so much I can take. I don’t think that us meeting and talking would be particularly fruitful either, to be honest.”

  You’ve got the wrong number, Wataru attempted to explain, when the woman with the strange voice began talking faster, each word hitting the receiver with the force of a punch.

  “Akira says that if you insist on carrying on like this, a divorce trial isn’t out of the question. He’s quite angry. I really think you might want to reconsider your actions. That’s all I wanted to say. Don’t call the office again. I’ve already received complaints from my superiors about personal affairs intruding on work.”

  Wataru sensed that she was about to hang up the phone, so he blurted, “I’m noph my mother!”

  The silence that followed rang in his ears. The receiver echoed Wataru’s voice.

  “Heffo?” Wataru managed through swollen lips. “Thiff ith Wataru. Wataru Mitani.”

  He heard a faint noise like someone swallowing on the other side. Then there was a click. She had hung up.

  The telephone call had lasted only a few moments, but it caused Wataru to break out in a cold sweat.

  Witho
ut a doubt—that was her. Dad’s other woman.

  That was the woman Akira Mitani was living with. The woman he wanted to end his marriage to Kuniko for. The woman he wanted to marry.

  She had a pretty voice—like a television announcer’s—Wataru thought. He hated himself for thinking it.

  The strength went out of his knees, and he knelt down on the floor. That’s when he heard the other voice, sweet and small—a voice he had completely forgotten about.

  “Wataru, are you okay?”

  Wataru jerked upright and looked around from where he was on the floor. No one was there, of course. That sweet, mysterious girl’s voice.

  “Don’t cry, Wataru. I’m with you now.”

  The words seemed to come from nowhere. Immediately, Wataru felt the pain in his chest lighten.

  “Where are you?” he asked the air around him, and the girl answered, “With you, like I said.”

  “Then why can’t I see you?”

  “I can see you, but I’m afraid you can’t see me.” He heard a light sigh. There was nothing to see, no touch of breath upon his cheek, but he had the distinct impression that if she were here, her breath would smell like candy.

  “You’ve forgotten about me, haven’t you, Wataru? You’ve forgotten what I told you.”

  This was true. With all that was going on, Wataru had run out of room in his head to ponder the mystery of a girl who couldn’t be seen.

  More than that, all his memories of that time, the mysterious girl’s voice, searching his room for the source, taking pictures—all those memories seemed vague, shrouded in a misty veil. They were there when he thought about them, but they seemed so distant.

  “You’re right…I-I forgot about you.”

  “Because the Watchers didn’t pass you as a Traveler,” the girl said, a sharp edge to her voice. “You came here once, didn’t you? But they kicked you out. That’s why your memory of me has faded.”

  Wataru didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. It all seemed to make sense in an odd way, but he couldn’t imagine why. “Wait a minute, where is ‘here’?”