Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2

by Mizuki Nomura

  How had Tohko felt when she was eight years old, waiting for her parents who never came home?

  I pictured a little girl with braids, trembling from fear of ghosts in the house of a murder-suicide, and my chest creaked with pain.

  “Ryuto said that… Kanako is like Alissa from Strait Is the Gate.”

  Tohko lifted her face and gave a fragile smile.

  “It’s true. Noble-minded, solitary… her eyes fixed on a place far away, not on this earth.”

  And then in her clear voice she told the story of Strait Is the Gate.

  “Gide’s Strait Is the Gate tastes like amber-colored consommé.

  “Do you know how they make consommé, Konoha? You put meat, bones, vegetables, and seasonings into a giant pot; let it bubble gently for a couple hours over a low heat; then extract the bouillon that’s turned into soup stock. Then you put the ingredients and some egg whites back into the bouillon… and you boil it. Then the impurities that bind to the egg whites rise to the top, and you skim them out carefully again and again. Finally, you pour it through a filter to take out the fat, and then at last the transparent soup is done.

  “It’s a recipe that takes a lot of work.

  “At first sight, it looks simple and clear, but… it’s hard to name all the things that went into it. Just like people’s hearts, all sorts of feelings are mixed up and melt together… pure, like the warm golden light before evening… It has a melancholy taste…”

  The book club where Tohko and I had spent our time after school came to mind.

  The western sun shining in the window.

  The tiny room filled with gentle, golden light. Tohko’s clear voice floating through it. The sound of a mechanical pencil sliding over lined paper. Tohko peeking at it excitedly.

  A time of happiness.

  If I had to put into words the things I’d felt then, I would never be able to express them fully.

  Too many different feelings were mixed together and yet pure—gentle, melancholy…

  Under the leaden sky, in the frigid, almost frozen air, Tohko went on talking.

  There was no one among the crowd of gravestones but me and Tohko. It was as if we were standing all alone in another world, cut off from the reality outside.

  Tohko’s eyes were looking into the distance, wavering desolately.

  “Jerome loved Alissa.

  “And Alissa cared about Jerome. She also prayed that her younger sister Juliette would be happy.

  “And Juliette did the same… Even as she loved Jerome, she hoped that he and Alissa would get married and be happy.

  “Everyone was being more considerate of the others than of themselves. So then why couldn’t any of them be happy? Did they all have to go through the narrow gate?”

  I wondered if she was remembering her father and mother as she talked about Strait Is the Gate.

  The last part of what she said seemed to be speaking not about Alissa or Jerome, but Fumiharu, Yui, and Kanako.

  Why did every one of them need to go through the narrow gate?

  I doubted Tohko would come up with an answer, either.

  She closed her mouth and was silent.

  Gazing at the distant, leaden sky, as if praying for the miracle that would change the world…

  I was right at her side, looking at her, and I, too, was filled with frustration and melancholy.

  My chest ached.

  A stinging pain.

  Tohko sneezed softly.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t have a scarf or gloves today.”

  My scarf… I had given it to Kotobuki.

  “It’s okay.”

  Tohko smiled gently.

  A pretty, fleeting smile that seemed ready to melt into the sad scenery.

  An ache shot through my chest again, and I took gentle hold of Tohko’s hand.

  Her frozen hand trembled slightly.

  Even so, as if partaking of each other’s warmth, Tohko and I clasped our hands in silence. Simply quiet, our words locked in our hearts…

  There was nothing else we could do in that moment. Just hold hands.

  Even so, we couldn’t stay here forever.

  “… Let’s go somewhere else. You can’t catch cold.”

  “… You’re right.”

  Tohko gazed sadly at the grave—perhaps she was giving her mother and father a final word. A moment later, after closing her eyes, she lifted her head and began to walk.

  Our hands were still intertwined. Not tightly locked, but gently, enfolding…

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “There’s somewhere I’ve been wanting to go.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  After some hesitation, a look of impermanence in her eyes, she whispered, “… Okay.”

  Chapter 4—A Dwindling Back, Not Even a Footfall

  Tohko argued for taking a bus that ran only once every hour, but I convinced her to take a taxi. The place we were headed was a tiny hospital.

  It probably also served as someone’s house. The three-story hospital and a one-story house stood in the grounds enclosed by a low fence. There was a sign that read INTERNAL MEDICINE, OBSTETRICS, GYNECOLOGY.

  “I was born here.”

  Tohko’s eyes narrowed with a deeply emotional smile. Now that she mentioned it, I recalled that the musical birthday card in the closet had been sent by a hospital.

  “Is this the first time you’ve come back?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ve visited your parents’ grave a bunch of times, right? How come you never once came here?”

  At that, Tohko got a conflicted look on her face, and then she smiled ambiguously.

  “… I was in a hurry.”

  I had a feeling it wasn’t just that, but I couldn’t ask her about it.

  “It would be nice if the doctor remembered me.”

  “You were a baby, right? Your face and body have all changed. There’s no way.”

  “But this doctor delivered my father and grandfather, too.”

  “How old is this doctor?!”

  As we were talking in front of the sign, a middle-aged, heavyset nurse came out.

  “Oh—can I help you?”

  Tohko, who was never timid with anyone, faltered uncharacteristically.

  “Um, I-I was born at this hospital. I wanted to say hello to the doctor.”

  “You’re in high school, aren’t you? How old are you?”

  “I’m a third-year in high school. I’ll be eighteen soon.”

  The nurse frowned sadly.

  “Then you won’t want Mamoru. It’ll be his grandfather, Kiichi. I’m very sorry, but the doctor passed away last year.”

  Tohko’s face fell visibly.

  “Oh…”

  “I’m so sorry, after you’ve come all this way. If you don’t mind, may I ask your name?”

  “My name is Tohko Amano.”

  At that, the nurse’s face shone.

  “Why, little Tohko! Tohko after Legends of Tono, wasn’t it?”

  Tohko’s cheeks flushed with happiness, too.

  “That’s right.”

  “I knew it! Ah, now that I know that, you look just like your mother. You really do take after her in the nose and around the eyes. I assisted at your birth.”

  The nurse who introduced herself as Ms. Hayashi invited us inside and even told us that the room where Tohko’s mother had stayed was open right now, and she let us see it.

  In the small private room on the third floor, we could look out over a rolling landscape from the window next to the bed.

  “Your mother’s name was Yui, wasn’t it? She would often look out this window. You said your father was an editor? He was busy with his work just then and wasn’t able to come visit her. Your mother must have been uneasy, having to give birth all alone in a strange place. Her face seemed so sad… It looked like she was worrying over something. Even so, she kept her spirits up and never uttered a word of complaint.

  “The firs
t time she held you in her arms, she smiled so happily!

  “She pressed her face to your cheek and called your name—‘Tohko’—in a gentle voice. She said she’d taken it from Legends of Tono. Apparently they’d decided to call you Tohko if you were a girl. Your mother truly seemed so happy. She was overjoyed at your birth with all her heart. And now here you are, all grown up.”

  Tohko listened to Ms. Hayashi’s story excitedly, her lips curved in a smile.

  As if she were listening to a beautiful symphony.

  To be honest, I’ve been jealous of your ties with Fumiharu, Kana.

  Because when Fumiharu proposed to me, he said something to me.

  He told me, “The stories you write are like home-cooked meals.

  “Simple and warm and soothing to the spirit, but the flavor is too weak to market them; I don’t think you could be an author for everyone.

  “But you can be my author. I love you and the things that you write. So please, be my author. Just mine.”

  And then, right in front of my eyes, he ate a piece of paper I had just written on.

  I was able to become a wife for Fumiharu, but I couldn’t become an author for the editor Fumiharu Amano. Fumiharu was kind enough to call me his author, but that’s because his author is really you, Kana.

  That hurts—

  While Tohko was inside me, I was very nervous and tense—worrying that when Fumiharu didn’t come home he might be with you.

  That the two of you would go somewhere far away that I wasn’t able to go while I was waiting perfectly alone in my room.

  My world crumbled bit by bit from within, and one day it went completely dark.

  Why don’t you come home, Fumiharu?

  You promised we would go shopping for things for the baby on Sunday, so why did you go off to work when Kana called you? Yesterday you were talking about naming the baby Tohko after Legends of Tono if it was a girl, and you had such a gentle look on your face, so why?

  Why—why did you go to Kana again?

  Pained, suffocating, feeling as if I was slowly sinking into darkness, irrevocably—Tohko was the one who saved me from that hell.

  When I held the small, soft, freshly born life in my arms, I was enveloped in such happiness as I had never felt until then and I smiled.

  She was so precious to me that I cried. I was so thrilled.

  I was happy.

  But my joy made you miserable.

  “My dad is from Iwate, which is the setting for Legends of Tono.”

  As we walked side by side down a raised path between the rice fields, dyed by the sunset, Tohko told me about it with a gentle face.

  “The legends told through the years in this place were collected into a book like fairy tales.

  “In Legends of Tono, a lot of goblins and benevolent spirits appear… like water-dwelling ghouls or bird-winged warriors with long noses… benevolent, childlike imps watching over houses… creatures unlike humans, who lived in the same land as humans, interacting with them. But you know what? There aren’t any stories about a creature who gobbles up books.”

  She whispered in a quiet voice, her emotion plain and her eyes softly luminous.

  “My father, and his father before him… and his father… back and back for ages, they all ate stories to stay alive. No one told of what to call a creature like that, so I don’t know. So that’s why—”

  Tohko’s steps came to a halt, and she turned her face in my direction, catching me by surprise.

  And then she puffed her chest out cheerfully.

  “I am simply a high school girl and, as you can see, a book girl!”

  I know that her voice making that upbeat declaration and her shining smile were both things that Tohko had won through the years she’d lived.

  I knew how many meanings were packed into the name book girl.

  “I am not a goblin! I’m just a book girl.”

  “I am a book girl who loves books so much that I want to devour them.”

  That it was a life different from most people’s. That fact had probably hurt her and caused her worry. Even so, she was wearing a brilliant smile. She pouted and sulked. “I’m not a goblin.” She turned the pages of a book and talked exuberantly about it.

  My chest grew hot at her radiant smile.

  I was sorry for being mean and calling her a goblin… If I said that, I knew Tohko would just puff out her flat-as-a-board chest even more and laugh. “As long as you get it now.”

  So I walked beside her in silence.

  We caught a taxi to the train station, and yet again I had to convince Tohko.

  “A bus is fine. Let’s do that.”

  “That’s an overnight trip, though! It doesn’t leave for a long, long time! We’d get there tomorrow morning!”

  “But it’s cheaper than the bullet train.”

  “Time is just as important as money. You’re studying for your exams, right? You shouldn’t be sparing one minute or even one second.”

  “That’s true… but I don’t have the money to go back on the bullet train.”

  Obviously I wasn’t going to cast her off by telling her to take the bus by herself, so I wound up saying, “… I’ll pay.”

  “What? No way!”

  “I want to. Don’t say a word.”

  “Th-then… let’s at least connect on a local train and—”

  “Service is going to stop partway today.”

  As Tohko dithered again, I groaned.

  “It’s an early birthday present.”

  Tohko’s eyes popped.

  “You remembered my birthday?”

  “… It’s March fifteenth, right? You forced me to buy a present for you half a year late. I’m not going to forget that.”

  I said it bluntly and her cheeks turned red.

  When I saw that, I got embarrassed and turned my back on her.

  “So we can take the bullet train home, right?”

  “Konoha…,” Tohko whispered. “I can walk home. So buy me books with my share.”

  I toyed with the idea of letting her jog home by herself.

  Even after we were on the train, Tohko seemed rueful and kept saying things like, “Let’s not transfer to the bullet train; we could stay on this one and take the local train as far as we can,” or “If we hitchhiked from here, would you buy me a book with the money we save?”

  “You have exams to take. Why don’t you memorize some math formulas or something?”

  “It’s fine. There’s no math on the second-round tests.”

  “If you take it too lightly, you’re going to fail.”

  “Agggh! Don’t say I’m going to fail or slip up or any of that!”

  So she was worrying about it a little, evidently.

  Outside the window, the sun had gone down and it was now pitch-black. There was no one in the train car but me and Tohko.

  Sitting on the opposite side of the box seat, oblivious, Tohko looked out the window and murmured, “But… the overnight bus is romantic and wonderful, too. The only light comes from the emergency lighting in the floor, and lights stream by outside the window. It’s like you’re driving through the stars.”

  “Like in Night of the Milky Way Railway?”

  As soon as I said it, I remembered that night at the planetarium. I got an image of my spirit suddenly separating from my body and flying through the night.

  The domed sky.

  The starry expanse Miyazawa had seen twinkling on all sides.

  Tohko telling the story of Giovanni and Campanella in a clear voice.

  “Let’s go together, Campanella.”

  Had Giovanni and the others gazed at the rushing stars from the window of their train, too?

  Tohko was still looking out the window. Her somber face was reflected in the scenery passing by.

  My heart squeezed tight.

  “… I wonder where Campanella went after that, all alone?”

  Giovanni was left behind, and Campanella left him.

&
nbsp; It resembled Jerome and Alissa.

  The one who made the decision was always the one who left. No matter how much the one left behind cries and begs, it accomplishes nothing.

  Had Tohko connected Alissa and Campanella, too? In a gloomy voice, she whispered, “Yeah. Maybe Campanella went through the narrow gate…”

  The gentle vibration… rattle-rattle-ing… came up through my feet. It was very quiet inside the car.

  Neither of us spoke.

  What was Tohko thinking about?

  She’d been able to talk lightly before, like she used to, but would she get awkward again when we reached Tokyo? But this time we’d never see each other again?

  After we’d both slipped into silence, Tohko said abruptly, “I’m… hungry.”

  “I haven’t had anything since breakfast, either. Try to ignore it.”

  “But I’m so hungry I can’t even believe it.”

  Her face fell and she looked like she was about to cry.

  But actually, it would be kind of problematic if I wrote an improv story and she crunched it up right here. Even though, unlike the overnight bus, there weren’t any other passengers around. The inside of the car was brightly lit, though.

  I tried once again to tell her to be patient, but Tohko rummaged through her bag and pulled out a paperback.

  I saw the title and gasped.

  Alt-Heidelberg—!

  The book I’d given to Tohko. The one stuffed under her mattress the day I’d nursed her out of illness. When I’d tried to tear it up and make her eat it, she had stopped me with tears in her eyes—

  “Not that book. If I eat it… I won’t have it anymore… Alt-Heidelberg is all I have left. It’s the only one.”

  Of the nearly two-thirds of the pages that had been left, she’d gone through more than half.

  When I saw that, a sharp pain shot through my chest.

  I said good-bye… I thought… as long as I didn’t eat the rest of Alt-Heidelberg…

  When the pages were all gone, maybe Tohko would forget about me. That unresolvable panic welled up in me.

  Tohko turned the pages of the book, and in a whisper of a voice she expounded on it.