Temple Alley Summer
Page 8
“Is there anyone that you want to see? Like your mom?”
I could help her meet Mrs. Andō. I wanted to take her right away.
“I don’t remember my former family.”
“You don’t even remember who you were before?”
Akari shook her head.
“Your name was Saori Andō, and you died of illness forty years ago,” I wanted to tell her. But I kept quiet. It wasn’t my place to reveal such sad things. I had gotten us in enough trouble by acting impulsively.
“I don’t think about meeting my former family,” she said. “It must be because I don’t remember them.”
So it was true that when families prayed to Kimyō Temple, their loved ones came back as different people. I liked that. It meant that those who prayed really were not praying for themselves, but to give their loved ones a chance to live again. A temple with that kind of power should have a place in the world.
“But my feelings are the same as they were before,” Akari continued. “I couldn’t do anything in my old life, so I was bored. I wanted to go to school, and I wanted to make friends and chat with them, and I wondered why I had to be sick. I was disappointed and sad and depressed at having to leave the people I loved. It’s like I stayed in that sad state for a very long time, in a dark place …”
“Oh, I see. I wonder if that’s how it is for all the people who come back?”
“I think it must be. And that’s why they can make the journey.” Akari nodded confidently.
I knew she was right. The more unfulfilled and denied a spirit felt, the harder it would hope to return.
“So, when you got back here, you decided to be a doctor,” I said.
“That’s right. I went to school. I found out what a school smells like, and what school lunch tastes like. Even summer homework was exciting—like, wow, I’ve made it! This is it!”
Akari put both fists under her chin and struck a pose like an old-fashioned TV star.
“I was so thrilled that I could wear a yukata and go to the summer festival. I don’t even know how to spend a summer vacation properly. Should I go to the beach? I figure I’ll just watch what everyone else does carefully. ’Cause I’m on my own, in a way. Oh, Kazu, you know that, too, right?”
“Yeah, I know. Weird, isn’t it?” I knew she meant Invisible Mama.
“The morning I came back, I was standing in front of your altar. Then there was this woman beside me—a voice. She said, ‘Welcome back, Akari-chan.’ That was when I realized, ah, my name is Akari. And she took me to that house.”
When Akari had left my house, Invisible Mama had been there too. I’d been watching from the second floor, so I couldn’t hear her voice. Now I knew that Akari was as alone as I thought—and that Invisible Mama appeared transparent to her too. I was shocked all over again.
“There’s nothing in your house, is there?” I asked.
“Nothing at all. You saw for yourself, Kazu. You’re the only one who knows the truth. My mom manages everything so that no one thinks anything is off. She’ll go and buy food for supper, without me saying anything. If she meets someone from the neighborhood on the way, she’ll stop and greet them as if they’ve known each other for years! Everyone else can see her fine.” Akari made her eyes bulge.
“She’s not the only strange thing,” I said. “Everyone else talks about you like they’ve known you forever. Everyone but me. Until I heard about Kimyō Temple, I thought that there was something wrong with me. I was worried.”
“You must have been! You’ve been dealing with all this from the completely opposite side,” Akari said. “I’ve been worried, too, Kazu, just trying to figure out how to live from day to day. When Mom took me to my house, there was nothing inside … All I saw was a desk on the second floor, in what I guessed must be my room. A bed and linens only appeared at nightfall. A backpack showed up on the desk chair labeled Akari Shinobu, Uchimaru Elementary School, Grade 5 Section 1. There were some textbooks and notebooks laid out. I had no idea what school was like, so I put every single book into the backpack. There was clothing as well. It was exactly the kind I used to think was cute. When I put the clothes on and left the house with my backpack the next day, I wasn’t so much happy as nervous—my heart almost went flying out of my mouth. I followed everybody else to get to school. I didn’t know if my dress was OK, because the other girls seemed to have skirts with leggings underneath. My fashion sense is decades old, I guess. Plus, I used to wear pajamas all the time.
“Anyway, that first morning, somebody called out ‘hi’ to me, and I almost jumped out of my skin! I didn’t know who the person was. When I looked at her nametag, it said she was in my class. So, I said ‘hi’ back and went to school with her. When I got to the classroom, I didn’t know which seat was mine, so I sort of stood there lost for a while. I told the person who had walked with me that I had to go to the bathroom, and I asked her to take my bag. When I came back, the bag was on my chair, and that’s how I figured out where to sit.
“Seriously, that first day I was so tense, Kazu! My heart was pounding the whole time. The moment you singled me out was the worst, I think. But even then, I didn’t disappear. And everybody kept acting as if they knew me from before. So, I just kept doing what everyone else did and somehow got through the day.”
Akari’s words spilled out. She must have been desperate to confide in someone. I was in awe of her.
“I heard about the summer festival at school,” she went on. “I heard the other girls talking about how they were going to go in yukata. When I went home and told my mother that I wanted to go and wear a yukata, she began talking as if she had one already—and there it was! And little by little, furniture began to appear. When I went to take a bath, I found a towel and soap and toiletries. When my mom began to make supper, we had a refrigerator, a rice cooker, a frying pan, dishes, and a table!”
Akari sighed in wonder at it all.
I sighed too. Wow. I had never actually seen the Kimyō Temple statuette, but Uncle Junichi said it was a Buddha icon that would sit in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t believe that a tiny statuette had the power to make such amazing things happen.
“But of course it makes sense that magic like that can’t last forever. I remember thinking it was all like a dream,” Akari said. She had stopped crying. “I guess that’s all it actually was.”
I wanted to do something for Akari. To make her feel it had been worth it to return.
“Do you want to go to the beach?” I asked her.
A minute ago, she had mentioned going to the seaside since it was summer.
“I’ve never been to the beach, so I don’t know whether it’s fun. But I’m sure I would like it.”
She nodded decisively, as if convinced that this was so.
“Going to the mountains would be fine too, then?” I asked.
“Yes! Any place would be great so long as I can feel the sun and think, ah, it’s summer. Even walking around a bookstore looking for a good story and having a boy in my class call out to me is better than you can imagine!”
“I see, so even right now is fun,” I said, starting to think she was messing with me.
“Yes!” Akari nodded. “If I disappeared here and now, I would be disappointed, but I would figure fate is fate. I already got to go to school, and I got to experience a little of summer vacation.”
“Wow, you’re so strong.” That was all I could say.
“I’m not strong at all, Kazu. I’m so used to giving up.”
I wanted to tell her to never give up, not in a million years. But I knew it might come out the wrong way. All I could do to help Akari, if Ms. Minakami still had the statuette, was beg and beg her to keep it safe as long as possible. And maybe I could try to ask for it back again, though that was probably useless.
Oh, Ms. Minakami was such a bullheaded granny! Without realizing it, I had clenched my fists. Was there really no way to get the statuette back? Could I kidnap Kiriko and force Ms. Minakami to
exchange it for the cat? Maybe, but how would I kidnap the cat? I doubted it would go well. I hung my head. I realized that even if I did that, the statuette could already have been burned. All I could do was sulk.
“Kazu-kun, don’t get so discouraged!”
Now Akari was comforting me. This was beyond pitiful. I had to pull myself together.
“Do you want to see fireworks?” I suggested.
“Yes, that sounds great!”
All of a sudden, we were chatting away as if everything were normal.
I wanted to show Akari the different types of fireworks: spinners, sparklers, the big local displays.
“We could ask Yūsuke and Ami and her friends to join us,” I said.
Akari and I both stood up.
“Didn’t you go to buy a book?” I asked, seeing that her hands were empty.
“Yes, but they didn’t have what I was looking for.”
“Was it on a list or something?”
“No, just something I’ve been wanting to read for ages …”
“Ages—you mean, since before?”
“Yes, that’s right. Oh! Kazu! Yes! There’s a story I want to read!”
“A story? What story? Hey, we could get it! Let’s get it!”
Akari nodded. She grabbed my hands and we actually started bouncing around. If Yūsuke had seen us, I would never have lived it down.
“It was a story in a magazine called Daisy,” she said when we stood still again. “It was printed as a serial; each issue of Daisy had a new section of the story.”
“Is that why you went to the used bookstore?”
“Yes. But no luck.” Akari looked down.
“A magazine … yeah, that’s hard. It would have been issues from years ago.”
I had been to the used bookstore too. They had tons of paperback and hardback books, but not many weekly or monthly magazines.
“Oh! But what if after the story came out in the magazine, it became a book? They do that sometimes with manga,” I said, getting excited. “They make a paperback. What was the story called?”
“It was called ‘The Moon Is on the Left.’”
I’d never heard of it. I don’t really read many books.
“I asked the bookseller to search for it by title, but nothing came up,” Akari said.
“Who’s the author?”
“I can’t remember. It might have been a foreign name.”
“I see. So, you’ve only got the title to go on.”
It seemed the story might be hard to find. Here we’d finally hit on something she wanted to do, but I was going to be of no help again. I hung my head.
“Kazu!” Akari admonished. “Stop moping. I’ve only been here three days, but look! I’ve got a friend! That alone makes me happy. I never had a friend I could talk to like this, you know.”
She smiled and skipped off. I guessed that would be all for now.
I stared at her back. I figured she had said that to make me feel better. She was happy just to be able to run. She had called me her friend, but I was nothing more than a villain who was ruining her life. She had been back for three days! Less than the life of a cicada. I could tell my eyes were going to fill with tears again.
Then I thought of something. I grabbed my bike and turned in the opposite direction.
I rode to Mrs. Andō’s house in Midorigaoka.
Mrs. Andō smiled in recognition when she saw me.
“I, uh, apologize for coming suddenly without phoning first,” I said to her. “I have a strange question for you. I wondered—your daughter Saori-chan, did she happen to like a magazine called Daisy?”
“Yes! Goodness, yes, she did,” Mrs. Andō nodded several times, as if just remembering. “I bought each monthly issue for her the day it came out and took it to the hospital. I glanced inside it once, and it looked like it was for girls a bit older than her, actually. But I kept buying it since she was so keen—”
“Do you still have them?” I cut in. I had no time to lose.
Mrs. Andō nodded that she did.
I wasn’t sure if I should ask her to loan them to me. She seemed to sense this. She didn’t say that I could borrow any—she had probably kept them in Saori-chan’s memory. She might not feel comfortable entrusting them to someone like me. Still, she asked, “Would you like to see the collection?”
I nodded and went inside with her.
“Saori was hospitalized from the age of five, so she didn’t really have a room here at home. Here are the magazines.”
Mrs. Andō showed me to the bookshelf on the enclosed porch near the family altar. The group of stuffed animals—probably from my grandpa—sat in front of the shelf.
“When I remember how Saori loved to read these, I can’t bring myself to throw them away,” said Mrs. Andō. She motioned to some faded spines near books that I knew, like the Arséne Lupin books and Treasure Island.
I sat on the porch and pulled out the issues of Daisy. There were six total. On the covers, girls in styles even I knew were outdated struck cute poses, touching their cheeks with one finger and so on.
Inside, girls who must have been famous back then posed in clothes that were once trendy. I saw a page of horoscopes and an advice column to a reader who had quarreled with her friend. Three different manga stories. Three fiction stories. The people who made the magazine had thrown in a little of everything. As Mrs. Andō had said, Daisy seemed to be for readers older than elementary school.
“The Moon Is on the Left” began in the earliest of the six issues. The pages were yellowed, and the print had faded, but I could still read the text.
Flipping through the pages, I saw that the story had illustrations. The author’s name was listed as Mia Lee. Akari had said that the name sounded foreign. Was Mia Lee Chinese, maybe?
I began to read, figuring this would be another story like the ones my sister loves, usually about how two best friends in the same class have a crush on the same person and find themselves in a predicament.
Unexpectedly, I found myself lost in something far more interesting.
Chapter Seven
“The Moon Is on the Left”
PART ONE
I knew that I was going to be sold. My brother, who was a year older, and my sister, who was two years younger, and I, would all be sold. If we stayed at home, there wouldn’t be enough food to eat. Father looked sad, but he seemed relieved. There was barely enough food now to feed him, let alone us children.
This would not be the first time Father had sold his children. There were once two half-sisters older than my brother, whom I barely remembered. At some point they had disappeared. People told me they went to work in a far-off town, but now I knew: they too had been sold.
We had no horse to ride. We would have to walk through the forest over a mountain, and then cross a river to reach the capital.
A breeze cooled the summer mountainside. Thinking perhaps it was the least he could do, Father brought out some cheese he’d kept hidden away and smoked rabbit meat for our lunch.
“I’ve never tasted anything so good!” my sister gushed.
Looking down, we saw a river twine around the base of the mountain, shining like silver cloth. That was the river we would cross. We children had never ridden a boat.
“Will you ride with us, Father? Is it as big as a house?” my sister asked.
“I wonder how it works,” my brother mused.
Beyond the boat, I thought of the thick forest on the opposite shore, and the capital that lay beyond, where we would be sold.
By the time we climbed down the mountain, the sun had nearly set.
We hadn’t seen them from above, but near the dock stood a cluster of several buildings. Seven or eight stores stood in all, but compared with the solitary house where we lived, the buildings seemed full of life.
Roads led away from the buildings on both sides, apparently to towns. Townspeople assembled here when they wanted to cross the river. Delicious smells wafted out of two res
taurants, another store sold water, and still another sold mushrooms and nuts from the mountainside. A fifth sold fish from the river. I saw two inns as well.
Compared with what we had seen above, the river looked frightfully wide. I could not see the opposite bank. If the weather turned bad, and the boat couldn’t cross, people bound for the capital would wait in the inns, we were told. The boat was not at the dock.
As we arrived, a wind began to blow, making waves in the river. Four or five people who were also waiting for the boat stared out and said, “It might not come today,” nodding to each other in agreement.
But as it began to grow dark, the boat finally arrived. It was large. Some ten people were aboard, and I saw open seats as well. Everyone had to row.
My brother walked warily to the boat and put a foot on it. He turned pale and jumped back when it listed.
We learned it wouldn’t depart that night. I expected we would sleep outdoors, but Father led us to the smaller of the two inns.
In the inn’s communal room, a number of people had gone to sleep, their bags under their heads as pillows. We found an open space and stretched on the ground.
A man rose abruptly and looked us over. I didn’t like his eyes. I could tell he was sizing us up.
“Heading to tomorrow’s market?” he asked Father.
Father nodded. Our empty hands told the rest. We had no luggage, no belongings. Clearly what my father had to sell at market was us.
Father and the man talked in low voices in a corner. Father raised a finger, the man raised two, and on they went.
“If we come to an agreement here, you can save on boat fare. I’ll make it worth your while.” I could hear the man from where I waited. Father must have known this might happen, which was why he paid for an inn.
He returned to us. “This fellow runs a silk operation in the town to the south. He’ll take two of you.”
Father planned to sell me and my younger sister to him.
I set my jaw and refused. I was sad to part with my sister, but I wished to see the capital. If I did not go now, to be sold, I might never see it my whole life.