by Hiro Arikawa
‘I suppose you’re not very interested.’
What can I tell you? Cats are realists.
‘But if you do happen to see one, don’t catch it, okay?’
Okay, okay. Message received. If they really are there, I’d be itching to grab them, but out of deference to you, Satoru, I’ll hold back.
Satoru sat down in front of the grave one more time. Then at last he stood up, and said, ‘See you later.’ He looked calm and refreshed, as if he had done what he had come to do.
We drove off again and before long Satoru was pulling up at another grave.
‘My grandfather and grandmother.’
He placed all the leftover flowers at this grave and, as before, he unwrapped some buns and cakes and left them as offerings, then burned some incense.
‘All right. Let’s hit the road.’
The next destination was Sapporo, where his aunt lived.
The silver van was heading off on its final journey.
It happened as we were driving down a fairly nondescript stretch of road.
The road cut through a hill which sloped steeply on either side. Rows of white birches covered the embankments. From halfway down the trunks of the birches, the ground was covered with thick, striped bamboo.
In Hokkaido, this was entirely ordinary, nothing-special scenery.
We were driving along when suddenly Satoru gave a little yelp and braked to an abrupt stop. The sudden halt made me lurch forward and I pressed my claws into my cushion to steady myself.
Hey, what is going on?
‘Nana, look over there!’
I turned to look out of the window in the direction of his pointing finger. And whoa, talk about surprising!
Two large deer, and a smaller one, with spots on their backs. Probably parents and child. With the pattern on their backs, they blended in with the undergrowth. Pretty darn good camouflage.
‘I didn’t notice them at first, but then one of them moved.’
This particular deer had a puffy white heart-shaped bottom.
‘Shall I roll down the window?’
Satoru leaned over to the passenger side, pushed the button and the window began to open with a mechanical whir. And with that, the deer family turned in unison in our direction.
There was tension in the air.
Ah – I get it. These animals are similar to those horses. If you were to divide animals into those two categories, they’re the hunted.
‘I must have put them on their guard.’
Satoru stopped the window and watched their reaction. All three deer were staring at us steadily, then the two parents began to lope away up the hill.
The young deer, left behind, held our gaze, its sense of wariness still not fully developed.
His parents, apparently exasperated, seemed to call down to him from the top of the embankment, and the young deer, flashing its white heart-shaped little rear end at us, bounded up the slope.
‘Ah, it’s gone …’
Satoru stared regretfully after it.
‘But that was amazing. I’ve never seen deer like that beside the road.’
It’s got to be thanks to my tail. Just you wait – my crooked, seven-shaped tail is bound to snag lots more wonderful things.
And the perfect example of this came not long after we had watched the deer disappear.
The scenery was, typically, nothing special for Hokkaido. Gentle hills with softly wooded areas running into one another.
Just as we were heading into a thin layer of grey cloud, it started to rain. The kind of rain you see on a sunny day, just a light scattering of drops.
‘That’s really something. That’s the exact boundary where the rain begins.’
Satoru drove on, happy, but most cats find rain very depressing. I hoped it would stop soon, and, amazingly, it did start to let up and the sun fought its way through the clouds.
In the driver’s seat, Satoru gave a massive gulp. I was napping and twitched my ears at the sound. He braked gradually before pulling over to the side of the road.
In the sky above a hill before us was a vivid rainbow.
One end of the rainbow was rooted in the hill. We followed that arc with our eyes and found the other end rooted in the opposite hill.
I’d never seen the end of a rainbow in my entire life. And Satoru hadn’t either, I gathered, the way he was holding his breath.
We were both seeing something extraordinary together for the first time in our lives.
‘Shall we get out?’
Gingerly, Satoru got out of the car, as though he was afraid any sudden move would disturb the rainbow.
With both hands, fingers widened, he lifted me up out of the passenger seat, and the two of us gazed upwards.
The rainbow’s two ends were firmly anchored in the ground. The top was a little fainter, but the rainbow was entirely whole. It made a perfect arch.
I’d seen these colours somewhere before. I thought about it, and then it dawned on me.
The flowers at the graveyard that morning. The wild purple chrysanthemums, the colour of each slightly different, the bright-yellow goldenrod, and the cosmos.
Cover that bouquet of flowers with some light-coloured gauze and it would be just like a rainbow.
‘We offered a rainbow, didn’t we, at the grave?’
It made me happy when I heard Satoru say this. The two of us were on exactly the same wavelength.
Instead of getting all puffed up about it, I threw my head back and looked directly upwards, and saw one more extraordinary sight.
I gave a long meow, and Satoru looked up to see what had caught my attention.
Above the perfect arc of the rainbow was another – faint, but still continuous – rainbow.
Satoru gulped again. ‘Isn’t it amazing,’ he said again, this time his voice a little husky.
To think that we’d see this kind of thing at the end of our journey.
Satoru and I would remember this rainbow for the rest of our lives.
We stood there for a long time, until the weather cleared and the rainbow evaporated into the sky.
This was our final journey.
On our last journey, let’s see all kinds of amazing things. Let’s spend our time taking in as many wonderful sights as we can. That’s what I had pledged yesterday, when we set off.
And what incredible sights we saw.
Shortly afterwards, we arrived in Sapporo, and our journey drew to an end.
4
HOW NORIKO LEARNED TO LOVE
IN HER PREVIOUS job, Noriko had often been posted to new places, so she was used to moving. She would take what she needed out of the cardboard boxes, steadily unpacking, always in the same order. When two or three boxes had been emptied, she would flatten them to give herself more space.
She had never liked to clutter her life with household objects, so she never had many boxes to unpack.
A wall clock emerged from a box she’d just opened. The hands showed it was midday. She hadn’t yet unpacked a hook to hang it on, so she placed it on the sofa in the living room. Every time she unpacked after a move, she reminded herself to pack a hook with the clock next time, but every time she forgot.
Afraid she’d lose it somewhere, whenever she moved, she’d put her phone in her pocket, and now it was vibrating. An email.
It was from Satoru Miyawaki, her nephew. The child her older sister had left behind. Miyawaki had been her sister’s husband’s last name.
I’m Sorry, read the subject heading; it was ornamented with a cute little emoji.
I’d hoped to arrive in the early afternoon, but it looks like it’ll be later. Sorry to leave you to unpack everything yourself.
He said he was going to pay a visit to his mother and father’s graves. He must have lost track of time there.
She typed in a subject for her reply: Understood. In the body of the message she wrote: Everything’s fine here. Drive carefully.
After she sent it, she began to fee
l a little anxious. Had her reply been a bit curt? It wouldn’t be good for Satoru to think she’d written a cold reply because she was angry with him for arriving late.
She opened the message she’d just sent and re-read it. They were both just short messages but, compared to the warmth in his, hers came across as rather blunt. Maybe she should add something?
She typed PS and was going to add a new message, but nothing light and chatty came to her. Still agonizing over it, she finally typed, Don’t rush, or you’ll have an accident, and sent it. But a moment later she regretted it, just like she had the last one.
Desperate to recover from this second mistake, she sent a third email. PPS, she typed. I’m worried you’ll be concerned about being late and drive too fast. As soon as she sent it, she realized she’d got her priorities all wrong, since sending so many messages to him while he was driving might distract him from driving safely, the opposite of her intention.
Just then, another message came in. From Satoru. The title read (Laughing). She breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank you for being so concerned. I’ll take you up on your offer and take my time.
And another emoji at the end, a waving hand.
Worn out by her own indecisiveness, Noriko plonked herself down on the sofa. Her nephew was more than twenty-five years younger than she was, and how were they going to get on if she forced him to respond to each and every tiny little thing?
But it had always been this way between the two of them. Ever since her older sister and brother-in-law had died and she’d taken on the twelve-year-old boy they had left behind.
Her sister had always done her best for Noriko, and Noriko had tried to do the same for the son. But she could never shake off the feeling that all she’d ever done for him was to provide for him financially.
Her sister had been eight years older than her.
Noriko’s mother had died when she was very young, so she could barely remember her, and her father had passed away when she was in her first year of high school. So, for Noriko, her sister had been her sole guardian.
When her father died, Noriko had said she wouldn’t go on to college, but her sister had insisted that she did, arguing that it was a waste if she didn’t, as she was so bright. After her older sister graduated from high school, she had worked at the local farmer’s co-op, and it seemed she had given a lot of thought to the question of whether Noriko should go to college. Even if their father had still been alive, the family’s financial situation would have made it difficult for both girls to go.
In the spring, when Noriko passed the exam to go and study law, the specialism she had chosen herself, straight after high school, her sister had been transferred from their hometown to Sapporo. Noriko’s college was outside Hokkaido, so this meant that both of them were leaving their hometown. Her older sister had used this opportunity to sell off every piece of farmland and the woodlands her father had owned.
Selling it off piece by piece, her sister had explained, wouldn’t bring in much money. Up until then, they’d been renting the land out to a neighbouring farmer, but the income was minimal. Selling it all as one lot would bring in a fair amount of money, enough to cover Noriko’s tuition fees and living expenses.
At first, they had been reluctant to sell the house they’d grown up in, and had rented it out, but by the time Noriko graduated from college her older sister had let this go as well. Her sister had married and the sale would raise money for Noriko’s remaining tuition fees. It wouldn’t do for her sister’s new family to have to continue supporting her.
Her sister always used to apologize for not having waited to get married until after Noriko had graduated. But Noriko knew how patiently her new brother-in-law had waited to marry her sister. He’d been transferred away from Hokkaido in his job and had proposed to her before he was due to leave.
That was the official reason, but there was another reason her sister couldn’t reveal. The young man’s family was opposed to him marrying this woman who not only had no parents but was supporting her younger sister. His family were well off, and knowing her older sister was struggling financially, they had decided she was after their money.
They’d set up any number of omiai, arranged meetings with other women, trying to get their son to leave her, and truth be told, it had been hard for both of them to resist the pressure.
Noriko was glad her brother-in-law was not the kind of man to buckle under pressure from his family and leave her sister. She was grateful to him for this, and it never crossed her mind to oppose her sister’s marriage.
‘But, sis,’ she argued, ‘can’t we at least keep the old house?’
‘No one wants to rent it any more. And it’s getting really run-down. The person we’re renting to now said if we sell it to him he’ll renovate it, but otherwise they’ll move out.’
‘That’s not a bad offer …’
‘Both of us live outside Hokkaido and we can’t afford the upkeep of an empty house. If we pay for the renovations, we might be able to find a new person to rent it, but financially it’ll be tough. And an empty house wouldn’t survive the winter snows.’
Her sister had never explained the situation to her before, and for the first time Noriko had understood that she had always done her best to provide her with everything she needed.
She had hoped one day to repay her sister for all she’d done for her. But well before she could, her sister and her brother-in-law were gone for ever.
At the very least, she wanted to do her best for the son they’d left behind, Satoru. That was what she had hoped, but, from the very start, she didn’t feel she had managed to keep that particular ball in the air.
And it would all end with her never having done enough for Satoru either.
Sis, I am so very, very sorry.
I don’t think I ever made Satoru happy.
All I do is make him worry over trivial things like this. The email with the title (Laughing). He joked around, but you could sense the tender concern that was so typical of Satoru.
Ever since she had started looking after him, Satoru had been a reasonable, very perceptive, mature child. But was this really his true nature?
Her sister had always insisted he was a mischievous boy who gave her a lot of trouble, though she’d always smiled when she said this.
And it was true that, while his parents were still alive, Satoru had been pretty naughty. When Noriko went on the occasional visit, she had found him big-hearted and self-assured, as children who know how fiercely they are loved often are. ‘Auntie, Auntie,’ he’d say, clinging to her, and sometimes he’d throw a tantrum or sulk.
A typical child, in other words, yet when he came to live with her he never once acted selfishly. This seemed less because his parents’ death had forced him to mature quickly than because Noriko had compelled him to be that way.
She had no idea how to overcome the distance she’d created between herself and the young Satoru, and she generally relied on him to paper over her sense of estrangement.
I hope he can at least spend these last days free of worry. She truly felt that way, and yet she couldn’t even do a decent job of exchanging a few emails with her nephew.
At least, Noriko thought, as she got up from her short rest on the sofa, at least I can get everything in order here before Satoru arrives. She might be lousy at sorting out the subtleties of other people’s feelings, but even an obstinate, unsociable person like her could buckle down and get the job done when she had to.
It was nearly three o’clock when Satoru finally drove up to the apartment.
‘Sorry, Aunt Noriko, for being so late.’
‘Don’t worry. I get things done faster by myself.’
She’d meant to respond lightly to his apology, but Satoru looked a little embarrassed. Seeing his expression, she realized that, yet again, she’d said the wrong thing.
‘I have no problem at all with us living together. I’m your legal guardian, after all.’ She’d hur
riedly added this, but again it was something that would have been better left unsaid. The more she tried to explain herself, the faster her speech became.
‘The only things left unpacked are yours, Satoru. I put the boxes in your room. I’ve pretty much finished putting everything else away, so you don’t need to help with that.’
When she saw Satoru’s face, as he looked at her, blinking in surprise, she realized she’d been firing off one comment after another without giving him a chance to respond.
‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m the same as ever …’
Her shoulders slumped dejectedly, and Satoru suddenly let out a small laugh.
‘I’m glad you haven’t changed, Aunt Noriko. We haven’t lived together for thirteen years and, to be honest, I’ve been feeling a bit nervous about it.’
Satoru then put the bag he had slung across his shoulder on the floor, and with both hands placed the basket carefully beside it.
‘Nana, this is your new home.’
He opened the basket door and a cat leapt right out. The cat had markings shaped like the character for eight on his forehead, and a black hooked tail. Other than that, it was pure white. She had the feeling that the cat Satoru had had years ago, the one they’d had to give away when she took her nephew in, had looked similar.
The cat had its nose to the ground, sniffing tentatively.
‘I’m sorry that taking me has meant taking in Nana as well.’ Satoru frowned. ‘I was hoping to find a place for him before we started living together, but I just couldn’t find a decent new owner. Though a number of people did offer.’
‘It’s quite all right.’
‘But it’s meant you’ve had to move into a new apartment.’
He’d told her he would find someone to take Nana before he moved out of his place in Tokyo, but that hadn’t worked out, so here he was, cat in tow. Noriko had moved out of the apartment she was in, which forbade pets, and had found a new place that allowed them.
This new apartment was also in a good location, convenient for Satoru’s visits to the hospital.
‘Ah, I see you found something nice, Nana.’
Satoru narrowed his eyes as he looked at the cat. Noriko looked over, too, and saw that the cat was sniffing around one of the cardboard boxes that had yet to be flattened.