Brave Story

by Miyuki Miyabe

  There was a brief pause, and the woman responded. She sounded worried. “You’re in Mitsuru’s class? Then, he didn’t go to school?”

  Wataru felt the blood drain from his face. If she’s asking that, it means Mitsuru isn’t at home either.

  The doorman bent down in front of the intercom. “Ms. Ashikawa? This boy here is in elementary school, like he says. He seems to be in a big hurry.”

  “Show him up.”

  The automatic doors slid open. Wataru ran through, heading for the elevator. The doorman followed behind him. It seemed like he was going to show him the way, though he didn’t seem too pleased about it.

  They got to the tenth floor and turned right out of the elevator. A slender woman was standing by the open door to the apartment.

  “This is him, Ms. Ashikawa,” the concierge said, giving Wataru a push. “I don’t know what’s going on, but be careful. I don’t want any trouble like last time. If anything happens on my watch, it’s my responsibility, you see.”

  The woman in the doorway thanked the concierge politely. He walked back, and disappeared into the elevator.

  Wataru stood quietly, looking up at the woman. He could feel the warm trickle from his nose spreading. He was still bleeding.

  The woman was very young. Wataru wasn’t sure exactly how old she might be, but there was no way she could be Mitsuru’s mother. She was really beautiful—a knockout. She wore a white sleeveless blouse and a light gray miniskirt. She was holding the door open with one hand, with the other resting lightly on her hip. A silver bangle shone on her wrist. Wataru was so sure the voice he had heard was Mitsuru’s mother that for a moment he stood there confused.

  “Are you a friend of Mitsuru’s?” the woman asked, looking down at Wataru. It was the same voice he had heard over the intercom.

  Wataru nodded silently. He only needed to nod once, but for some reason he kept nodding over and over, like a broken toy.

  “Your nose is bleeding,” she said disapprovingly. She lifted her hand from her waist to her forehead and stood there for a moment. Then, sighing, she opened the door wider and waved him in.

  While not particularly large, the room was bright and filled with sunlight. It was very clean. The furniture seemed like something from a designer’s catalog. Wataru’s head was spinning, so he couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t seem like the kind of house that people with kids would live in. He started to wonder if Mitsuru really lived here.

  The girl shut the door and followed Wataru into the living room, taking a tissue out of a box on the coffee table and offering it to him. “There. Wipe your nose and tell me what happened.”

  Wataru did as he was told. “I ran into the door downstairs.”

  He pressed his nose with a tissue. It throbbed painfully. He hadn’t been able to feel it before, but now it hurt so much his eyes watered.

  The woman pushed forward a chair on rollers for Wataru, and then sat down on a nearby sofa. Wataru sat in the chair. Sitting, their eyes were on the same level.

  The woman looked like she was in even more pain than Wataru. “So Mitsuru really wasn’t at school?” she asked quietly.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Wataru answered from beneath the tissue. His front teeth were hurting too. He was too scared to touch them, afraid they might be loose.

  “What’s your name?”

  Wataru introduced himself, and before she had a chance to say anything, he added “Mitsuru and I go to cram school together.”

  The woman merely nodded silently. She didn’t seem suspicious at all. Wataru got the feeling that maybe Ashikawa never talked about school.

  “Well, thank you for your concern,” she said, still looking pained. “You don’t have any idea where he might be, do you?”

  “I haven’t seen him at all today.”

  She nodded again. “He left a message. I think he’s run away from home.”

  I suppose you could call that leaving home. So long. And where did he run away to? To some other place, some other world?

  “Maybe you heard about me from Mitsuru. I’m his aunt.”

  That explained her age.

  “Mitsuru doesn’t talk much about home, so I really didn’t know anything. Just the rumors about him living overseas and stuff.”

  For reasons Wataru couldn’t guess at, Mitsuru’s aunt suddenly looked even sadder. She put a hand to her forehead again. The bangle sparkled in the sunlight coming in through the window.

  “But Mitsuru is really popular, you know,” Wataru added hastily. “He’s really good in class, and the girls are all over him.”

  Mitsuru’s aunt looked at Wataru sadly; then she said in a whisper, “But he left. Leaving a note I don’t even understand.”

  “What did he write?” Wataru asked, leaning forward. “He didn’t say anything about…about going to another world, did he?”

  The woman looked up quickly, surprise in her eyes. “How did you know that? Did he tell you something?”

  Wataru’s mouth snapped shut. He didn’t want to have to explain anything. If he could just read Mitsuru’s note first…

  “You must have been a good friend of his, Wataru.” Mitsuru’s aunt reached over and touched his knee. Her fingers were warm. “You have any idea where he might’ve gone? I can’t let him do this. I can’t lose him…”

  “Can’t lose him?”

  She must think that when Mitsuru said he was “going to another world,” he really meant he was going to die. Come to think of it, that makes much more sense than the truth.

  “He didn’t say he was going to die in his message, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t, but…” Her face twisted like she was going to cry. Even so, she was still beautiful. Wataru noticed some similarity in the line of her nose with that of Mitsuru’s.

  “It was about three months ago, I suppose. He tried to commit suicide. Had you heard?”

  Wataru shook his head, dumbfounded.

  “No, I don’t suppose you would have. I’m sure he didn’t want to talk about it. It was right after he came here—he was spending a lot of time at home, alone. He must’ve gone stir crazy. He tried to jump from the roof, but luckily the concierge found him in time.”

  Suddenly what the concierge had said about “not wanting any trouble like last time” made sense.

  “I knew I wasn’t cut out for this,” Mitsuru’s aunt muttered.

  It was becoming clear to Wataru that there were a number of unusual things about Mitsuru’s family and he was only beginning to scratch the surface. If only he had some clue, some gut feeling of how to proceed.

  Relax, Wataru. Just remember the Private Detective Meadows series. Wataru wasn’t particularly fond of text-heavy adventure games, but he had enjoyed that one. I’ll just pretend Mitsuru’s aunt is the client, and ask her questions like Detective Meadows would ask. How could that be hard? Mitsuru’s aunt was perfect for the role of the beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to visit the Meadows Detective Agency pleading for help.

  “He said in his note that he was going someplace where no one could find him,” she said. “He said not to bother trying to look.”

  “I-I might know,” Wataru stammered. “I might have an idea where he’s gone.”

  Her grip on Wataru’s knee tightened. “Then take me there!”

  “I would, but, I don’t…I don’t really know how to get there.”

  She opened her eyes wide. “What do you mean? Is it far away?”

  “Well, not exactly…”

  “He didn’t ask you to keep it a secret, did he? Is that what this is about?”

  That wasn’t exactly the truth, but, if you thought about it the right way, it wasn’t far from the truth. After all, the only people who knew about Vision were Mitsuru and Wataru.

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Well, we can’t leave him alone. He’ll die! When Mitsuru says he’s going to do something, he really means it. The last time he was already crawling up the fence on the roof’s edge when they stopped
him. If the concierge had come a moment later…”

  “Um, did Mitsuru call in absent today?”

  The change in subject was so abrupt that for a moment Mitsuru’s aunt merely blinked. “Huh?”

  “Did he call in absent to school?”

  “Well, yes. This morning when I saw his note, I called his teacher and told him he would be absent today. I didn’t want there to be any commotion at school.”

  Now that was odd. She didn’t want to cause a commotion at school? Wouldn’t that be the first thing she would want, as his guardian? Wouldn’t it be normal to call the school and ask for help?

  “Did you call the school after that?”

  “No, I didn’t, why?”

  So she hadn’t heard anything about Kenji’s gang, though Wataru wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  The phone rang.

  The phone was sitting in the far corner of the living room. It was a large unit, with a personal fax machine attached to it. Mitsuru’s aunt got up from the sofa to pick it up.

  Wataru’s vision wavered, and he had a sudden feeling of dread. The summer before, he had gone with his father to a large art museum and seen the painting Cypress Trees by Vincent van Gogh. It was a bright, pretty painting, but he remembered being struck by the sky the most. It was filled with strange and crooked swirls. When he left the museum later that day, those swirls still turned behind Wataru’s eyes. When he looked up at the real sky, it seemed like it was spinning. And when he got on the train, the handrails were spinning. Everything was spinning! That night, when his dad took him to a restaurant for dinner, he was still obsessed with that van Gogh painting—he could barely eat a thing. That’s how it felt right now. If he looked out the window, at the sky, maybe he would see those swirls—a churning, swirling energy, flowing into everything, filling the world.

  Mitsuru’s aunt seemed to be clinging tighter and tighter to the receiver as she spoke.

  Wataru began to worry that maybe, by talking about school, he had tripped a flag.

  In role-playing games and adventure games, the story typically followed a set course. Usually, you would have to ask a particular person a predetermined question to advance to the next stage of the story. Programmers set up flags to keep track of which of these turning points the player had passed. Once a flag was up, you were free to go on, but sometimes you could get stuck in the same part of a game for weeks, unable to find the event that would trigger the flag, scratching your head without a clue how to proceed.

  That’s what Wataru’s conversation just now with Mitsuru’s aunt had felt like. Wataru knew things and she knew things that neither of them were telling each other. They were talking, but the story wasn’t going anywhere…until Wataru, unwittingly, said whatever the key word was that she had been waiting for. It had set off a flag. They were going to the next stage.

  Mitsuru’s aunt hung up the phone. She looked pale. “Three kids in the sixth grade are missing,” she said, her voice trembling. Before Wataru could even nod, she ran over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him violently. “Why didn’t you tell me? Wataru, you knew, didn’t you? Kenji and his friends were stalking Mitsuru—that’s why you came looking for him when you heard they had gone missing, isn’t it? What if Mitsuru did something to them? Well? Why don’t you say something? Answer me!” she shouted, then shoved Wataru away. She covered her face with her hands and slumped to the ground. Wataru felt dizzy, but not on account of the shaking. It was the swirling behind his eyes, the swirling in his heart.

  What if Mitsuru did something to them?

  It was one of the first questions out of her mouth—and she had sounded terrified. Wataru didn’t think she was worried about Mitsuru, either. She was worried about Kenji.

  Who would think that?!

  Did she know he could use magic? Did she know he could chant incantations and summon monsters to harm his enemies? She must. How else would she get the idea that Mitsuru could do anything, three to one, against Kenji’s gang. What do you know, Ms. Ashikawa?

  “There were a lot of television reporters at school,” Wataru said in a quiet voice. “A lot of helicopters too. One of the girls in class told us that on the news, they were saying two of Kenji’s friends had been found. They were alive, but it was weird…”

  Mitsuru’s aunt looked at him through her fingers. “Weird?”

  “They couldn’t remember anything about the night before.”

  Mitsuru’s aunt dropped her hands and stood. “Well, Mitsuru can’t do anything like that.” She spoke in a flat, even tone, as though she had resigned herself to some fate already and was just waiting for the pieces to fall into place. “But if the television crews were there—then I’m afraid he’s finished. They’ll find out he ran away, and they’ll come asking questions about his family.”

  “His family?”

  Mitsuru’s aunt merely shook her head. “I-I don’t know what to do.”

  “Ms. Ashikawa…”

  She began to cry. “You’re the same age as Mitsuru, right? Eleven?”

  “Yeah?”

  Wataru felt like crying too. He felt so sad, so sorry for her. She had seemed so perfect, so adult. Now it was like he could see her falling apart, just like Kaori Daimatsu must have. What if she became like her, a delicate, broken thing?

  “How old do I look?” she asked, and then answered her own question. “I’m twenty-three. I graduated from college last year, and I just started working at my first job. I’ve only lived twice as long as you and Mitsuru. I’m no grown-up. I can’t—I can’t deal with all this.”

  She walked over to the phone. “I have to tell the school,” she said. Then she looked at him. “Wataru, thank you for coming. You should probably go home.”

  By early afternoon, the news of Kenji’s disappearance had gone national. Wataru recognized the buildings in the television coverage of his school, despite the fact that they tried to blur out the school’s name. He could even pick out some of his classmates walking home.

  Wataru’s mom had heard about the incident the same way Mitsuru’s mom had, via the PTA emergency phone network. After that call, the phone had rung several times, mostly calls from worried friends and relatives who had seen the news. His mom told Grandma in Odawara, and Grandma in Chiba, that yes, Wataru was safe at home, and there was nothing to worry about. He got a little scraped up in a fall on the way home. Yes, he ran back from school scared when he heard the news.

  There was a call from Wataru’s teacher, who said that Wataru had forgotten to pick up his report card and that he would mail it to them the next day. He wasn’t angry that Wataru had left at all. Apparently, there had been a big panic at the school. That ambulance Wataru heard while running to Mitsuru’s apartment complex had been going to pick up a girl from Wataru’s class who had fainted. Several sixth-graders had passed out too, until they ran out of ambulances and had to call in help from fire departments in the neighboring wards.

  Wataru’s mom had tended to his scrapes (thankfully, his front teeth hadn’t been broken) and made him chicken rice for lunch. He could barely swallow it. Even though she had basically kicked him out, Wataru couldn’t help but think about Mitsuru’s young, lovely, sad aunt, all alone in her apartment. She didn’t have anyone to make her a bowl of chicken rice. He wondered if Mitsuru’s uncle (the one in America) was her brother. Maybe he was still overseas. She would have no one to turn to, no one to come running to her aid.

  The afternoon news confirmed that sixth-grader “K” was still missing, and now there were further reports that fifth-grader “M” from the same school had also been missing since that morning. The newscaster added that M had left a note, and thus it was unclear whether his disappearance was linked in any significant way to K’s situation.

  Wataru’s mom spent the afternoon glued to the television, eating lunch during commercial breaks. When the phone rang it was Katchan’s mother. She was asking for Wataru’s dad to come help the fire department’s
search and rescue team.

  His mom politely explained that her husband was going to be late at work and couldn’t come home. Mrs. Komura replied that any time would be fine—they would be out searching until quite late. She was speaking so loudly that Wataru could pick up her words from across the room.

  “Of course, if they manage to find him before nightfall, there won’t be a need,” Mrs. Komura said, sounding as jovial as ever. “That Kenji was a real troublemaker. I’m sure he got mixed up with some street gang and had the sense knocked into him, that’s all.”

  His mom apologized a few more times, then hung up and returned to the television. She seemed lost in thought.

  “You father isn’t calling, is he?” she muttered suddenly.

  “He just hasn’t seen the news, I bet,” Wataru offered.

  “He says they have a television in their company cafeteria.”

  “Then he doesn’t know it’s my school. They’ve been avoiding saying it.”

  His mom was silent. Wataru kept quiet too. The news stations continued talking about it, and the variety programs were already being replaced by live feeds from the school. Unfortunately, there was no new information.

  Sometime around four, while Wataru was lying in his bed, resting, the doorbell rang. Thinking it was Wataru’s homeroom teacher come to pay a visit, his mother took off her apron and straightened out her hair before running to answer the door.

  But the unexpected guest was Sanae’s mom. Wataru knew her from having seen Sanae and her together several times at the mall and the nearby supermarket. Wataru had been nervous around her at first—she wasn’t just the mother of a classmate, she was the mother of a girl—but Sanae’s mom was the friendly sort, and it had been easy to talk to her when they met.

  “I heard from my daughter that Wataru wasn’t feeling well and thought I’d drop by for a visit. She wanted to come too, but with all the commotion in town I thought it best to keep her at home.” She looked over at Wataru who had emerged from his bedroom to say hello.

  “Oh,” his mom said, “I’m sorry—Wataru’s fine.”