“Other than the people who said, ‘The last scene was extraneous’ and ‘Everything is overwrought,’ there were no complaints about it gettin’ the grand prize. It was unanimous, right? That’s pretty impressive for someone who was still a fourteen-year-old in middle school.”
“…What did you think of her when you read it?” I asked in a hoarse voice. The edges of Ryuto’s mouth relaxed, but his eyes still seemed pitying.
“It’s a pretty story. I’m sure the author is a pure, happy person who’s real sensitive to stuff.”
The word “pretty” shot into me like an arrow slathered in poison. I felt like it would stop my heart.
“Sorry, I should get going.”
I couldn’t take it anymore, and I left the restaurant without him.
I moved quickly down the street through the frigid night, panting in white clouds.
Akutagawa had said that Miu had flaws, that she was just an ordinary girl.
I had thought of her as something clean, like an angel, and had done nothing but hopelessly adore her. My feelings for Miu were as transparent as water and shone like light.
Had Miu perhaps suffered as the object of these feelings?
Had my love been a burden to her?
“If I were a beautiful, pure person, and I love-love-loved Chee and only Chee and saw her as the most absolutely precious thing in the world—Chee wouldn’t be able to face the shame, and she’d be forced to commit suicide for real.”
Takeda’s last boyfriend hadn’t known her true character.
He saw only the surface when he fell for her. So she’d had no choice but to distance herself from him.
Had that been the case for Miu, too?
A dark storm was raging inside my brain. The cold north wind pounded mercilessly against my swollen face.
Somebody—somebody tell me!
Had I hurt Miu first?
* * *
How woeful. You’re going to be all alone soon.
Haraguchi slapped you? And said she hated you?
I’m sure she does.
That’s because I told her you belong to me. I said, “We even did it. Do you mind my leftovers? He told me that you were into him even though you’re all misshapen and you wouldn’t leave him alone, and he laughed about you in front of me.”
Haraguchi’s face when I said that—oh, man. It turned bright red, there were tears in her eyes, and she was shaking; she was a total mess.
You don’t go play with Mine much anymore, do you?
What happened? I thought you two were best friends.
But still he’s so distant and selfish with you. What an awful person.
It’s got to be because you broke so many promises to him. Oh well. After all, he did say I couldn’t come.
All you did was obey what I told you, so you didn’t do anything wrong. Mine’s the one who did something wrong, talking to my dog, touching you, taking you out as if it was his right.
We put a nail in that by telling him not to bother my dog ever again, so it’s fine. Mine was pretty angry and worked up. He interrogated me, but you told him I wasn’t the kind of person who would say something that despicable, so all Mine could do was retreat, spouting off his complaints.
That’s how you came to be all alone.
You lost everyone around you except for me.
Ahhhh, that felt so good. It was amazing.
You need to be even more alone.
You need to be cut to shreds, dragged through the mud, so you come apart in tatters.
You need to feel such despair that you lament and can’t stand back up
You know if that happens I’ll stroke your hair and tell you stories.
You’re my dog, so if you act like it and stay loyal, I’ll feed you and torment you for eternity, your life at my mercy.
Note:
Bulcanillo’s experiment.
That girl is the most obnoxious one. But I can’t make a move yet. I have to gather my strength.
* * *
It took a few days for the bruises on my face to become less obvious. During that time, I couldn’t go to the hospital. Because if she saw my face, she would definitely ask what had happened.
When I texted Miu that some family business meant I wouldn’t be able to go see her for a little while, her reply came back saying, I want you to come soon. It hurts to not be able to see you for even a day. It hurt me to read that.
Was Akutagawa meeting up with her? The day after my fight with him, the two of us were called to the guidance counselor’s office, and our head teacher asked us what was going on. But we kept our mouths stubbornly shut, so we were sent back with only a warning. We left the room together, but we returned to the classroom separately without speaking a word to each other.
When I thought of how he and Miu were talking behind my back, I prickled. I thought about texting Miu to ask, but the thought seemed petty, and I never managed to do it—not when I still didn’t know what Campanella wished for.
On the other hand, the thing about Kotobuki and Tohko continued to bother me.
Kotobuki was still hurting. Tohko could be worried.
Omi had asked me to look after Kotobuki, and I wanted to return her feelings, so what in the world was I doing?
After school on Thursday, I went to the school library and found Takeda at the front desk.
“Hello, Konoha. I’m sorry I surprised you the other day.”
She bowed primly and smiled affably.
Her straightforward smile made my chest throb.
“…Don’t force yourself, Takeda. If you’re hurting, you can say so.”
“Hee-hee-hee, I’m fine, reeeeeally. Wanting to die is starting to, like, be a habit for me. Don’t worry about it, okay? Next week there’s a sale I’ve been looking forward to, and I promised some friends that I’d go see a movie with them, and I haven’t even used my half-price ticket for griddled monja cakes yet, so I can’t die.”
Takeda didn’t care in the slightest about sales or movies or monja cakes. At that thought, I felt even more morose.
“I want you to go visit Nanase at the hospital instead of worrying about me. I’ve been sending her texts for a while, but there’s never any answer so I’m worried about her. She’s usually really good about responding.”
I couldn’t tell her that the reason Kotobuki wasn’t answering was that Miu had thrown her cell phone out the window.
Instead, I said, “Takeda, you were upset because you couldn’t feel the same things as other people, but you’re worrying about me and Kotobuki. You’re a normal girl and kind.”
When I said that, Takeda’s expression suddenly became vacant, and she murmured sadly, “You think so? Do I really…seem normal? When you and Tohko saved me up on the roof, I…thought maybe I’d be able to change. That maybe I’d be able to live my life like a normal girl.
“And, Konoha, you told me…I had to live.
“That I had to reach a different place than Shuji had.
“But I still feel empty suddenly…and want to die…
“I thought so many times that I was all right now…but I would go back to how I used to be…I was on a loop…
“Do you really think I’m different than before? Do you think…I’ve changed a little?”
As she looked up at me, her eyes wavered with pain and anxiety.
It wrung my heart out.
I was just like Takeda.
I thought I wouldn’t get lost anymore, I thought I wouldn’t be afraid, thought I’d gotten stronger; I believed I’d become smart enough, matured enough to avoid hurting people. The experience I had piled up, my shreds of confidence, broke down easily and knocked me back to where I’d started. I bumped into things everywhere in the darkness and stayed lost.
I couldn’t reach the place I was aiming for.
As things were, what I was able to tell Takeda wasn’t true, but…
I wanted to encourage her just a little, and I pushed aside the pain and forced a smile.
“Yeah. In my eyes, you seem like a normal girl.”
A faint smile came over Takeda’s face, too.
“…Thank you.”
“I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow.”
“Hee-hee, good.”
She spoke in a cheerful voice, but then her eyes were suddenly anxious again, and she lowered her voice.
“Um…you shouldn’t get too close to Ryu, Konoha.”
She must have her guard way up. I felt sorry for Ryuto after all. Just as I was about to follow up with her about it, her eyes slipped lower, and in a terribly pained voice, she said, “He’s a scary person.”
The words on their way out of my mouth stopped in my throat.
Takeda lifted her eyes immediately and grinned.
“Well, I’ve got work to do. When you see Nanase, can you ask her to return my texts?”
The next day I was, unsurprisingly, lingering in the hallway at the hospital.
Did I need to go see Kotobuki? At this point, even if I apologized, I would only be defending myself, and it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d hurt her. Maybe Kotobuki didn’t even want to see me.
I thought it over until my head throbbed and then turned toward Miu’s room.
I would try to ask Miu exactly how Kotobuki got hurt. I would face Miu without running away, and with that done, I would go apologize to Kotobuki.
My emotions taut, I knocked on the door to her room.
There was no answer.
When I opened the door and peeked inside, I saw it was empty.
“Maybe she went for a test.”
I walked to the window. There were some Persian buttercups arranged in the vase on the table beside her bed. The flowers were still fresh, and the vase was full of life. My heart grew muddled, and when I turned my eyes away, they came to rest on the book at her pillow.
A faded sky-blue cover. My book!
My heart shrank, and I stared at the book with its swollen pages, as if it were sucking me in.
“I’ve reread this book so many times…It’s such a wonderful, beautiful story.”
Did Miu really think so?
That it was a wonderful, beautiful story?
Feeling tense, as if I was breaking a taboo, I reached out for the faded cover when—
I heard the door open behind me. I hurriedly pulled my arm back and turned around.
A woman about the same age as my mother stood there, wearing a beige coat.
Her face tightened in surprise.
“Are you Inoue?”
I thought my heart would stop.
I had only met her two or three times, but I remembered who this person was, glaring at me, her face thickly painted with white foundation and twisted in aversion.
“Miu says she doesn’t want to see you. She jumped because of something you did to her. Don’t come to see her again, Inoue.”
Miu’s mother!
Her shoes clicking, she walked over to me with a harsh look on her face. I couldn’t move.
“It is you! What are you doing in Miu’s room? Is it your fault that she’s been getting violent again? That’s what happened when she jumped off the roof. Until then, she was such an attentive, obedient child, and then out of the blue, she does an awful thing like that!
“When she regained consciousness, she was extremely worked up and crying, ‘Not Konoha.’ And every day after that, she would swear, ‘I don’t want to see Konoha,’ ‘It’s Konoha’s fault,’ ‘I don’t want to see his face or hear his voice!’”
Her sharp voice filled with hatred, and it bent and cracked like a dark whip, pinning me down. The things Miu’s mother was saying were the exact opposite of what Miu had told me.
“When you came to see me at the hospital, I wanted to see you more than anything. But my mom and dad…they wouldn’t let me see you…They thought you must have done something to me.”
“All she would say was ‘I want to get away from Konoha,’ ‘I don’t want to be near him,’ ‘If I don’t get out, I’ll kill myself again.’ Our only option was to hurry and transfer her to another hospital.”
“And then they forced me to change hospitals…”
Miu, her eyes filling with tears as she looked sadly up at me.
Miu laughing that she was so happy to see me.
The sight of Miu wreathed in pure light, her voice—both grew more and more distant until pitch-black darkness fell over me.
“My mother-in-law berated me mercilessly for taking Miu away. She said it was wrong, that Miu should have been raised by her side of the family from the very beginning, that I’d ruined her precious granddaughter.
“And my husband told me there was nothing we could do since Miu was sobbing that she didn’t want to stay with me, that he supposed I must have had a huge burden, and then my mother-in-law stuck her nose in and wouldn’t stop the proceedings for transferring her.
“And yet the instant my mother-in-law had a stroke and dropped dead, they made Miu transfer back here because they said there wasn’t anyone to help take care of her! They said I had an obligation as her mother to look after her! Now that his nagging mother is dead, that man just wants to formally divorce me and marry his girlfriend. Miu got in the way of that, and he shoved her off on me. He’s an absolute scumbag!”
Her spiteful voice filled the darkness. Her bloodshot eyes glinted lividly, like the sun setting for the last time over a blasted world, and tried to scorch my body and suck me in.
Hadn’t Miu’s father been posted somewhere else for work?
Formal divorce? His girlfriend?
I was shaken and disturbed by the words pelting me in quick succession.
What was Miu’s mother saying with her face that flushed and her voice that loud?
And Miu—had Miu really lied? Were the things Akutagawa and Kotobuki said true?
Had Miu hated me all along?
Then why had she said she was glad to see me? That she’d been working hard at physical therapy in order to see me?
My knees trembled and threatened to buckle. My ears roared, my fingertips grew numb, and my breathing became strained.
The rancorous words she was spewing out still wouldn’t stop.
Just then there was a hiss and a silver crutch came flying into the room. The vase on the bedside table fell onto the floor and broke apart.
“Stop it! Don’t make Konoha your trash can, too!”
The one who’d hurled the crutch into the vase and knocked it over was Miu.
Miu’s eyes burned with rage as she clung to the door. It was as if sparks were flying, crackling, from her irises. Her white face grew even paler and more translucent until she looked like a ghost.
Miu’s eyes were on her mother.
“What are you doing here?! I said you didn’t have to come, didn’t I?! Get out! Now!”
Fragments of the vase were strewn across the floor, along with water and the red flowers. Miu’s mother was just as pale as her daughter was.
“Miu! How could you do that?!”
“Get out! Get out!”
Miu tried to move forward, but she stumbled, unable to support her body, and she fell. She gritted her teeth in apparent pain and crawled over to the broken fragments. She picked one up and pressed it to the side of her neck.
“Miu!” I shuddered.
“Stop it at once, Miu!”
“Get out right now. If you don’t, I’ll cut myself. I’m serious!”
Her mother was speechless. After staring at each other for only a second or two, she muttered grimly, “I’ll get your father to come,” put her coat on, and rushed out of the room.
The shard fell from Miu’s hand and struck the floor with a clatter.
“I wish they were dead…all of them…I’ll never forgive them for throwing their trash wherever they felt like it…I wish they were dead…”
“Miu…”
My tensed body finally moved, and I walked over to Miu, placed a hand on her shoulder, and tried to help her stand
.
Miu slapped my hand and shook it off.
Her long nails scratched the back of my hand. As she looked up at me, I could see the same look she’d given her mother on her face. A face filled with fierce rage, pain, and loathing. A look like fire.
I was flabbergasted. In a low voice, Miu said, “Don’t touch me.”
That made my heart freeze instantly.
The absolute rejection, the naked loathing in her voice.
Her daggerlike gaze.
My skin prickled with the fear of toppling backward into the darkness.
“M-Miu, are the things your mother said true? That you wanted to transfer hospitals? Because you didn’t want to see me?”
Even now I didn’t want to see it.
If Miu denied it, if she said that everything had been a lie of her mother’s, I might have believed her.
No! It wasn’t true!
The pain digging into my chest condemned me for my own failings. It wasn’t as if I’d believed Miu. I had just wanted her to make me believe her. For my own peace of mind.
After all, I couldn’t bear to be hated by Miu!
Please, say it’s not true!
But Miu wasn’t trying to hide her loathing for me anymore. She fixed me with a cold, lucid glare as I trembled and paled like a small rabbit, and in a voice dripping with bile, she declared, “You never noticed? That I hate you? I didn’t want to see your face, so I went to be with my dad. Everything I told you was a lie.”
The sound of something precious being pulverized echoed through my brain.
Miu’s smile.
Miu’s voice.
Miu’s touch.
Miu’s stories.
They froze solid in an instant and then shattered.
“But it’s true that I was intense about my physical therapy so that I could see you, Konoha. I wanted to see you and take my revenge. After all, you were the one who did this to me!”
Book Girl and the Wayfarer's Lamentation Page 12