Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2

by Mizuki Nomura

  Because we weren’t going to see each other again?

  Because we would become memories to each other and grow apart?

  If we could forget, great. But could I forget when Tohko’s memory lingered so vividly in my eyes, in my ears, on my skin? When my chest ached so much I could hardly bear it?

  Akutagawa laid a hand on my shoulder without a word.

  “If it makes you look so pained, why not go see Amano? Wasn’t she important to you? She always cared about you. She thought well of you.

  “Maybe it’s not my place to say this. But I still think Amano was probably the one who understood you best.”

  Akutagawa’s straightforward gaze was right in front of me. Fighting back the pain that tightened my throat, I whispered, feeling like I could cry, “Yeah… you might be right.”

  The one who understood me best.

  And yet she’d ordered me to write a novel. Told me to go back to being Miu Inoue.

  Even though she should have known how much I would loathe that. Had she wished it so hard that she couldn’t help but say it?

  To read a novel like manna, like her mother should have written—a story as sacred as nourishment from God—sweet and white, falling from heaven.

  Wanting to fill her empty stomach with it.

  “I’m ashamed, but… there’s nothing I can do for Tohko. Because what Tohko needs is me as an author. If all I am is a high school student… I can’t help her.”

  My heart chafed.

  Akutagawa was looking at me impatiently.

  Behind me, Kotobuki called out, “Inoue!”

  Her shy, quiet voice erased my bleak emotions. I smiled and said, “See you,” then walked over to her.

  And so several days went by.

  I waited for Kotobuki in the morning and at the end of the day so we could go to school and leave together. Even after we got home, we would talk on our cell phones or text, then call each other again and send texts after we hung up, then finally tell each other “good night” over the phone. We spent the time feeling close, even though we were apart.

  I was always on high alert about what Ryuto was planning out there, but the peaceful days went on so long that I started to lower my guard.

  When I saw Takeda in the hall and asked, “How’s Ryuto doing?” she told me in a bright voice, “He’s good. We had a feast at Harumi’s restaurant yesterday.”

  Harumi’s restaurant was the place we’d had the Christmas Eve party. Ryuto went there all the time. Harumi was a pretty waitress who worked there.

  “We ran into four girls and it turned into all-out hand-to-hand combat. Ryu got slapped plus he got splattered with a glass of soda with ice in it.”

  She told me this with a guileless smile, as if she were engaging in perfectly ordinary conversation.

  “Were you… a part of that, Takeda?”

  “No, I watched and had some of their new ginger cake.”

  “… Oh. There hasn’t been anything else out of the ordinary?”

  “Um… well, Ryu’s been calling someone a lot. I guess they never pick up, though, and he gets a little annoyed.”

  “Calling someone? Who?”

  “I dunno.” She beamed with a meaningful expression. “Are you worried about Nanase? That maybe Ryu’s still tormenting her?”

  “Yeah. I want to protect her.”

  When I said that, Takeda’s face suddenly turned serious.

  “You’ve changed toward Nanase a little, Konoha.”

  “Wh—y-you think so?”

  “Yup. I feel like you cherish Nanase more than you did before. And I think Nanase’s started to be less uptight when she’s with you.”

  “Was I that rude to her before?”

  “Nooo. Nanase was all hyperaware of you, but you were toootally cool. Did you feel sorry for her?”

  “Urk…”

  It was true.

  Takeda grinned again.

  “I’m glad things look like they’re going well. I gotta go.”

  I watched her wave and move off, in a complex frame of mind.

  The part about Ryuto calling someone nagged at me. She said he looked annoyed. If it was some girl he was messing around with, fine, but…

  Contrary to how placidly my days were slipping by, the dark clouds looming in my heart refused to clear away. I knew Ryuto hadn’t given up yet. He seemed likely to do anything right now, no matter how horrible, as long as it would achieve his goal. And that scared me.

  It was lunchtime when Maki spoke to me.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while, Konoha.”

  I was picking out some bread for lunch at the school store, and I turned around in surprise.

  She was smiling sexily, giving off the impression of a brilliant rose blooming proudly in a peaceful field or of a carnivorous flower. Her enchanting brown hair spilled over her ample chest in waves.

  I had always seen Maki in her workroom in the music hall before, so this situation in front of the school store at lunchtime was so incongruous that it left me stunned.

  With a look that told me everything was clear to her, Maki asked, “I heard you came to see me. Was that about Tohko, by any chance?”

  When I twitched, her eyes narrowed with a smile that said, “I thought so.” “We can’t relax here. Let’s go to my workroom.” She walked off with an arrogant bearing, as if it were foregone that I would follow.

  When we reached her workroom, Takamizawa had set out tea and sandwiches.

  “So? You wanted to ask me something?”

  Feeling suffocated, I opened my mouth. “How much do you know?”

  “Just about everything that can be found out,” she answered offhandedly.

  “What about Tohko’s parents?”

  “They died in a car accident, right? When Tohko was eight.”

  “Okay, what about Ryuto’s mother?”

  “She’s that author, Kanako Sakurai. She sure is famous, huh? For a lot of reasons.”

  The insides of my mouth dried out and prickled. In a hoarse voice, I asked the thing I wanted to know most of all.

  “Do you think Kanako poisoned Tohko’s parents like she wrote in her novel?”

  As soon as I spoke the words, the pit of my stomach grew heavy as a rock and my fingertips became cold as ice.

  A bewitching smile came over Maki’s face.

  “The police investigation found no evidence that Kanako Sakurai had murdered the Amanos. The circumstances of the accident were unusual, though, so it’s possible to imagine there was some crisis while they were driving.

  “They had left Tohko at Kanako’s house that day in order to attend a wedding. Ryuto had stayed the night with them, and after the family had breakfast at their apartment together, they took Tohko and Kanako’s son, Ryuto, to the Sakurai house. Then they headed to the ceremony in a car driven by Fumiharu, the husband.

  “If Kanako poisoned them, it would have happened then, but…”

  Maki cut her words off for effect. I held my breath.

  “But Kanako wasn’t in the house then. The one who met them at the door was the housekeeper, who was watching the house while Kanako was gone. So, barring her using some sort of trick, it’s impossible for Kanako to have poisoned them.”

  Cold sweat poured down beneath my clothes.

  Kanako hadn’t poisoned the Amanos.

  So then why had Kanako written a novel in which she seemed to confess to killing them?

  Why had she treated Tohko as if she didn’t exist?

  Had she taken her in, intending to ignore her all along?

  I recalled what the letter from Kanako that I’d read in Tohko’s room had said, and I shuddered.

  “I wonder if you think things would be better if I were dead.”

  The letter that she had written to Yui, supposedly her best friend.

  Kanako had accused Yui of having poison and of intending to poison her husband, Fumiharu, and Kanako with it.

  “Once you’ve killed him, are you going to ki
ll me, too? Are you going to poison my food…?”

  Kanako knew where the poison was hidden, too; when she checked, there was the poison.

  The terror and suspicion that had been born when I read the letter rose again and bit into my heart, although I beat it back again and again.

  Had Yui been the one who poisoned them?

  Had she forced Fumiharu into a double suicide—?

  Ryuto had said it, too.

  That Yui had poison.

  That night when it had seemed the very core of my body would freeze, lit by the eerie light of the moon, as he fixed me with eyes that glinted in their depths, he’d revealed that he was the reincarnation of his father, Takumi Suwa.

  That he had pressed the violet, heart-shaped bottle of poison into Yui’s hands. That Yui had smiled ecstatically and thanked him. And that she had used it.

  “After all, the only way you can hold on to the person you love forever is to either kill yourself or kill them, right?”

  I recalled his low, sweet voice, rich with madness, and it gave me goose bumps.

  There was no such thing as reincarnation! If he was saying that and he meant it, then Ryuto was insane. And yet there was a bizarre, undeniable code in his words.

  “Please write, Konoha. Before I give Tohko Ole Lukøje’s little violet bottle.”

  I had glimpsed the same name in Kanako’s letter.

  “The stories you wrote were just like the dreams Ole Lukøje gave to children with his painted umbrella. Insubstantial and ambiguous, leaving no impression, they disappear the moment morning comes.”

  Ole Lukøje was a fairy of sleep who appears in a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Was this repetition of names a coincidence? Or was it—

  “You don’t look so hot.”

  When I came to my senses, my palms were soaked with sweat. I was sure my face was as pale as someone deathly ill, too.

  I let out a short breath to get my breathing under control, and then in a hard voice, I whispered, “I’m fine.”

  Maki didn’t look concerned in the slightest; actually, she seemed to be enjoying the show I was giving her.

  Even when I showed weakness, this girl had no sympathy. Instead, all she did was look down her nose at me.

  “There’s nothing wrong. At all.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Her lips pulled into a mean-spirited smile.

  “Actually, I heard you were under the weather and that you were at home resting. Are you better now?”

  Still smiling, Maki answered, “Well, I wasn’t exactly sick.”

  Then she rested her elbows on the table jovially, propped her chin in her hand, and peered at me.

  “Is there anything else you want to ask me? Today’s special. I’ll have a chat with you and it won’t cost you a thing.”

  “Ryuto’s father, Takumi Suwa… what kind of a person was he?”

  “Ho-ho, I’ve got a perfect tidbit for that one.”

  Maki’s eyes flashed sarcastically.

  “I’ve seen pictures of Takumi, and he looks unsettlingly like Ryuto. It’s only natural, them being father and son and all, but even so, they’re so alike it’s as if Takumi himself had crawled out of his grave.

  “It seems Ryuto inherited his personality from his father, too. Even though Takumi was still a minor, he worked for nightclubs and scouted for adult entertainment. He was a bum, a blow-off guy who spent his life going around from one girl’s house to another apparently. He couldn’t stand the battles women got into, and yet he was totally blasé without a hint of self-awareness. Just like the Ryuto Sakurai we know, eh? Father and son, both a total waste.”

  Maki hated Ryuto, and she was being merciless.

  When she said that they looked disturbingly alike, I experienced a sensation as if my chest were being scraped out.

  “…’Cos I’m the reincarnation of Takumi Suwa.”

  I knew it was impossible, but still the image of Takumi Suwa gradually overlapped with Ryuto, was becoming Ryuto, in my mind. Twisting his lips unsettlingly and looking at me with glinting eyes.

  “I heard that Takumi died in a car accident, too.”

  Maki shrugged.

  “He jumped out into the road to save a cat. The cat was fine, but he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and died in surgery.”

  “A cat?”

  “It’s a totally unbelievable way to die, right? Jumping in front of a car to protect a cat. What a completely brainless guy. The funeral was packed with women, and I hear it’s still the stuff of legend.”

  She scrunched up her face at the idiocy of it and took a sip of tea.

  “… Did Kanako attend Takumi’s funeral?”

  Maki set her cup down and answered breezily. “Apparently not. She said she was working on a manuscript at her office. Though I heard Tohko’s mom went.”

  Ryuto’s threatening eyes flashed through my mind, and my heart thrummed again.

  “How did Kanako feel about Takumi, do you think? She gave birth to Ryuto, so there must have been love, but then to work through his funeral… And when he was in the accident, she didn’t go to the hospital. That’s what Ryuto—”

  Maki looked at me with mocking, sympathetic eyes.

  “You are such a child.”

  Her voice was cold in its declaration and I choked.

  “There are women who can have a man’s child without being in love.”

  All of a sudden, I had no words.

  It was like Maki were attacking me—the air abruptly gone cold.

  At last, I forced my voice out. “So then why did she have him?”

  Maki replied, her eyes still resting on me, “It could be… for revenge?”

  The drastic word stabbed into my chest.

  Revenge?

  Against who? Yui? Fumiharu?

  “There were rumors that Kanako was having an affair with her editor, Fumiharu Amano, anyway, so it’s perfectly believable that she would get together with another man and get pregnant as payback because of that romantic entanglement and that she would have the child.”

  It couldn’t be—

  Who would have a child with someone they didn’t even love as payback?

  “That’s just my interpretation. It’s not a fact; it’s something I think is plausible.”

  She teased me, seeming to ask, Was that too shocking for you, Konoha? and my cheeks flared with heat.

  Her face calm, Maki said, “Let me see your phone,” and then she stored her number in it. “If something happens, you can call me. Though I might charge a consultation fee next time.”

  “… Could I ask you just one other thing?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “If Tohko’s parents were poisoned, is it possible that Takumi was the one who got hold of it for them?”

  Maki returned my phone, then replied with a cloying tone of voice.

  “Actually, that’s the more natural thing to think. Since Takumi had entrée at shady places, he could probably have gotten his hands on some poison. What’s surprising is the possibility that Kanako would have gone out with Takumi for that reason.”

  I felt nauseated and uncomfortable.

  I thanked Maki and left the music building. As I was walking down the hallway, various images and words swirled in my mind.

  Had Takumi Suwa really gotten the poison? Had he given it not to Kanako, but to Yui?

  No—that was all stuff Ryuto had said. Not facts, just simple delusions. I couldn’t get taken in by it. Reincarnation was laughable!

  I know that.

  “… I have memories from my previous life.”

  “Things aren’t gonna settle down unless someone disappears, just like back then.”

  I shook my head fiercely.

  Wasn’t I supposed to have forgotten about Tohko already?

  Had there really been poison? Who had poisoned them? It had nothing to do with me.

  Tohko’s parents had died nine years ago. There was no use searching for the perpetr
ator now. Especially if Yui might have done it—

  When I got back to my classroom right as the bell was ringing, Akutagawa came up to me.

  “You weren’t with Kotobuki?”

  “Huh?”

  “I told her you’d gone to the store and she left.”

  “She did? I haven’t seen her.”

  “Really… I thought since neither of you were back, I was sure you were together, but…”

  Akutagawa’s eyes clouded. My heart chilled as well and then ached, as if it were being wrung out.

  Was Kotobuki still looking for me?

  A chill crept up my spine. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the calls. There were zero.

  The bell rang and everyone sat down at their desks.

  Kotobuki still wasn’t back.

  Mori, who was friends with Kotobuki, glanced worriedly toward the hall.

  Akutagawa, too, wore a grim expression.

  I called Kotobuki’s phone. A message played telling me she couldn’t be reached because either her phone was turned off or she was somewhere with no signal.

  In a fog, I sent her a text.

  “What happened? Class started. Where are you?”

  My pulse quickened and my temples started to ache sharply. Why wasn’t Kotobuki back?

  My chest was dyed black with worry. Hurry—hurry—come back soon, Kotobuki.

  The teacher came into the room.

  Kotobuki still wasn’t there.

  Just then, the phone gripped in my hands buzzed momentarily.

  There was something incoming.

  A text!

  But it was from Takeda, not Kotobuki.

  Its subject line was “Nanase”—

  I shuddered. Frantically, I opened the text and checked what it said under my desk.

  library

  As soon as my eyes fell on the short, uncapitalized message, I was already standing.

  The people at the desks around me turned their faces up in surprise. The teacher’s eyes went round, too.

  “I’m sorry. I’m going to the nurse’s office!” I shouted, sounding like I’d just crossed paths with a brigand, and I flew out of the classroom.

  There was no doubt in my mind! Something had happened to Kotobuki!

  Had I been careless thinking that he couldn’t make a move at school during lunch in the middle of the week?!