“His face looked like he’d gotten this crazy shock and he didn’t move a muscle. He was just staring at the album. I called his name, but it was like he didn’t hear me.”
“What picture was Ryuto looking at?”
“Just… a regular photo.”
Confusion showed in Takeda’s eyes.
“At least, that’s how it looked to me. It looked like it was taken in the dining room at Tohko’s house on Christmas. Tohko and Ryu and Tohko’s dad were sitting at the table. Tohko and her dad were carrying the plate with the turkey on it together and were turned toward the camera and smiling, and Ryu had his arms around a plate with a cake on it, and he looked thrilled. All three of them had on sweaters and Christmas-themed buttons that looked handmade. Tohko’s mom wasn’t in the picture, so I’m pretty sure she’s the one who took it.”
A peaceful family get-together on Christmas… I wondered what it was in the picture that had startled Ryuto so badly. Takeda said he’d had his eyes fixed on the photo without even twitching a muscle, and then had groaned out of nowhere.
“He said, ‘It can’t beee!’ ”
Then he’d opened the closet and pulled out a box, almost crazed.
He opened the cardboard box, dumped its contents on the floor, and then hunted through them, crawling on his knees. He repeated that act several times and then suddenly stopped moving again.
“And then Ryu said something.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘It wasn’t Yui?’… and his face was pale, like he might die any second.”
I gasped.
It wasn’t Yui?
Did he mean—the one who’d used the poison? But then who had used it?!
Or had there never been any poison at all? Had the Amanos died in an ordinary accident?
“Ryu left with this incredibly tortured look on his face and I had no clue what was going on, so I was just staring at the front door. Then Ryu’s mom came home.”
“Kanako!”
“Yeah. She had a seriously scary look on her face, and even though I said hi, she went into the house without saying a word to me. It looked like she was annoyed about something and in kind of a rush.”
Why had Kanako gone home? Tohko had said, “… She wasn’t at home today, was she?” which meant she hadn’t planned to be home on Saturday. And yet…
Given Ryuto’s behavior, I had no clue what was happening, just like Takeda.
Takeda said she’d gone back to her own house after that.
“I called Ryu’s phone a bunch of times, but he never picked up and he never answered my texts. So… he went to your house, huh?”
“He asked me to do something for Tohko.”
Takeda laid a hand lightly on the cover of No Longer Human.
“That sounds like a last request.”
The words, whispered with her cold face, made me start.
“What are you saying? Of all people, Ryuto would never commit suicide or anything like that.”
“I don’t know. Ryuto is broken down. He bawls his eyes out to girls over nothing… then when you push him away, he whines and gets mad and cries. How can he live with just his emotions, doing whatever he wants? I can’t understand it. I kind of… hate him a little.”
An emotion sharp like a splinter of glass came into her empty face, then disappeared.
That flash gave me goose bumps.
Takeda’s hand didn’t move from atop her book.
In the end, it still wasn’t clear what had happened to Ryuto.
When I visited Maki at her workroom in the music hall after school—“Oh really? Hmmph. Was he that messed up, the little boy?”—she opined haughtily as she faced the canvas and moved her paintbrush.
“Well, he’s always doing whatever his whim tells him and acting flippantly. It’s obnoxious. So it’s good for him to knock his head against a wall and spray some blood around every now and again. Otherwise he’d just turn into an even more intolerable punk.”
She was being free with her opinions, even though he was supposedly the father of the child inside her. When I asked whether Ryuto had been there, she replied, “If he had, I would have chased him off,” and so I was at a loss.
“I wonder why men are such wastes of humanity. They’re almost always as fragile as they are swaggering. They crumble in a second. I’m going to be angry if he goes into hiding or dies on me. What a pain.”
Her eyes bugged with anger, and she seemed pretty annoyed.
“Umm, Ryuto’s not dying, though.”
Takeda was one thing, but why did Maki have to take the conversation in unnecessary directions? Though on Saturday night, Ryuto had certainly been as feeble as a sick, cast-off puppy when he huddled outside the gate of my house.
“No, I’m talking about another idiot.”
“Another…?”
In a dark voice, Maki muttered, “Tamotsu Kurosaki.”
I gasped.
“He’s pretty much stopped eating since Hotaru died. He looks like a skeleton. Because of which he’s destroying his company. There aren’t enough words for how pathetic he’s become.”
I recalled the stormy, tragic love when I saw her rage-filled gaze.
Heathcliff without Catherine…
He had been the guardian of the young girl named Hotaru Amemiya, had been her uncle by marriage and her lover, as well as her father. The last time I’d seen him was the day of her funeral.
Skeletal, a stubbly beard on his face, his sunken eyes flickering with agony and despair that could never heal… That day, he had been the very image of Heathcliff wandering the moors in search of a fragment of his soul.
He had committed an unforgivable crime.
He had looked as if even he didn’t hope for salvation any longer. Like a ghost, simply waiting endlessly through hunger and thirst for the end of the world to come.
“That man… has abandoned his business, secluded himself in his mansion, and has been starving himself to death. Despite the fact that he killed someone to seize the company and did plenty of dirty stuff to make it grow. It looks like it’s going to be taken over by another company. And still he doesn’t have the energy to fight! If he dies like that, Hotaru would turn in her grave.”
I gulped at her scathing tone. Her eyes, glaring fixedly at the canvas, burned like fire.
“I’m serious.” Maki groaned, gripping the paintbrush so hard that she shook, and then she shouted spitefully, “You think I’m gonna sit by and let him die?! I slapped him until my hands swelled up, over and over, punishing him. I will never forgive him if he dies! Thinking about Hotaru! Tasting suffering more bitter than death! Even if the weight of his many crimes presses on him and stops him from breathing, he has to go on living!”
Unforgiving of the weakness in Ryuto or Kurosaki, Maki was like a perfectly straight, unbending sword.
Even if she despaired, Maki would probably never give up living and fighting.
I was so jealous of that strength that my chest burned.
I left the music hall, and as I walked through the school yard, I thought things over bleakly.
If I had someone like Maki who would give me a firm order when I was stuck at a crossroads, maybe I would be able to go in that direction unhesitatingly.
If I was ordered to live when I was on the brink of death, maybe I would be able to stand back up.
But Tohko always made me decide in the end.
Each time I hunkered down, she would gently squeeze my hand. But she would never pull me by the hand and lead me to the right path.
She would simply get a warm smile on her face and look at me and ask, “How do you want to do this, Konoha?”
“What do you think, Konoha?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Where do you want to go?”
The white sheets and smell of medicine in the nurse’s office—as I covered my face and cried in bed, Tohko whispered sadly.
“You have to find the answers to those questions on you
r own, Konoha. Even if it hurts… even if it makes you sad… even if you suffer along the way… you have to get there on your own.”
But I couldn’t find the path on my own. I didn’t know which way I should go.
I went into the school building and changed my shoes at the shoe locker. My foot slipped and I fell.
How could I fall here where there was nothing? I couldn’t even support my own body. No strength would go into my legs…
A tear dropped.
I had only stumbled a tiny bit, and yet sadness welled up to fill my throat, and feeling embarrassed, my breathing pained, restless, I stood up shakily and started walking, like a child searching for its guardian.
My feet carried me to the book club room automatically.
Even though I knew Tohko wouldn’t be there. Even though it would only hurt to go there.
I didn’t know anywhere else to go. Tears dropped onto my palms.
“Hello, Konoha.”
When I opened the door, Tohko, sitting on a chair by the window with her knees pulled up to her chest, turning her face toward me and smiling, rose up like a vision and I felt dizzy.
The fold-up chair was empty, and the scenery outside the window was misty and white.
The old books piled up on the floor had lost their reader and transformed into useless paper.
I buried my face against the pitted wooden desk where I had always written Tohko’s snacks, and I cried.
Tohko wasn’t here.
I’d known that and yet sorrow stabbed at my chest and my throat quivered.
The days I’d spent with Tohko pressed in on my chest, one after another.
Smiling beneath a magnolia tree and puffing out her chest, saying, “As you can see, I am a book girl.” Tugging on my hand while I stood gaping, bringing me to the book club room to make me write improv stories as snacks. Tearing the pages into tiny pieces and bringing them joyously to her lips. I had listened, sliding my mechanical pencil across the paper, to the secretive crinkle-flp sound, to her voice when she gulped it down and began to expound.
Why had Tohko always, always seemed to be having so much fun when we were together? Why had she smiled so happily?
When she suddenly announced that she was taking a break from the club to study for her college exams, that day, too, she had eaten a snack from the mailbox in the school yard—“That was delicious!”—and left a letter about her reactions.
She was utterly, completely hopeless at math and had gotten Fs on it, and yet when I was having problems, she would come and help me without fail.
The smell of the wooden desk pricked my nose as I pressed my face against it. No matter how much I cried, the tears kept coming.
Tohko’s face rose in my mind.
Ryuto had said that there are some things it’s better not to know. I didn’t know what it was he’d learned.
But I’d never wanted to find this out, either. What a pathetic, useless person I became without Tohko.
I’d hoped I would become someone who could look straight at the truth, and yet I’d been bowled over by my own weakness being laid bare and broke down crying.
That day at the planetarium, I’d been determined to finally move into the future.
Under a tree at a factory on the outskirts of town on Christmas Eve, Tohko had squeezed my hand, and I’d returned to the time in my life when I had wept pathetically. That night I’d felt the warmth of Tohko’s hand and thought about the phantom who had departed all alone, and I’d prayed that he and Kotobuki and Miu would be happy—
I learned then that the truth wasn’t always beautiful.
The music teacher who’d taught me that nothing beat an ordinary life had been a sad criminal, who, more than anything, had lusted for talent, had envied talent, had been driven mad by talent, and he had even laid hands on his lover.
The truth hurts people.
Salvation doesn’t exist anywhere.
Even a young man with the voice of an angel, spilling over with radiant talent, could become a phantom spattered in filth and sunk in the shadows of night.
I wondered what had become of him…
“Do you think Miu Inoue will write another book?”
That young man who’d questioned me with a sorrowful look in his eyes—
“Take care of Nanase.”
He’d whispered that in my ear and then disappeared into the darkness—
I wonder if he passed through the narrow gate, wearing a dauntless expression that seemed to shake everything off.
I wonder if he’d gone alone.
Omi was like me—but he had run down a road I couldn’t take without ever turning around.
If Omi were here now, I knew he would wallop me. He would probably never forgive me for hurting Kotobuki.
Even though he liked Kotobuki, he’d chosen a solitary path without telling her anything. I couldn’t be like him.
Being by myself, I was lonely.
By myself, I was weak.
When I was sad, there would be no one to comfort me. No hand to squeeze mine. I would have to stand completely on my own.
If I didn’t have someone with me—no, if I didn’t have Tohko there for me, I couldn’t stand back up.
I couldn’t walk down any path at all!
I lifted my face, sloppy with tears, and pulled over the fifty-page notebook that had been tossed on the desk. While I sniffled and my shoulders shook and I panted through my burning throat, I gripped my mechanical pencil and turned back the cover.
If I wrote a novel, maybe Tohko would come back.
If I wrote a sweet story the way Tohko liked—not a weird story to tease her like I usually did—if I could write a story that would make Tohko happy, if I wrote a story like Tohko’s mother—
The thick lead stopped above the white lines.
What was wrong? My hand wouldn’t move…
The first line wasn’t filling in, try as I might.
I tried desperately to force the words out, to the point I thought my head would split, but not a single letter came.
I was floored by that fact.
Why?! I’d been able to write so easily before! Nothing was coming! It was as if my body was empty. That shouldn’t be. I should be able to write. I’d never been unable to write before, not once. Even when I’d loathed writing and fled from it, I’d always been able to do it when I wanted to. I’d written snacks for Tohko every day!
And yet I couldn’t write! My spine shuddered with cold. No—if I didn’t write, Tohko wouldn’t come back. I had to write—a story like manna falling from heaven!
The lead in my pencil snapped apart. I clicked it in a panic, but no matter how often I pushed out new lead, it kept breaking before I could write a single letter.
A bleak feeling came over me and I started to have trouble breathing. The pencil fell from my numb fingers.
There was a tight pulse in my temples, and taking shallow breaths, I slid out of the chair onto my knees on the floor.
I had thought I wasn’t going to ever have an attack again.
Tears fell again at how pathetic and mortified I felt. Sweat broke out in torrents, and the intervals between breaths grew smaller and smaller. Air wasn’t getting into my lungs at all!
I was suffocating. It hurt. I should just die here! I don’t want to be where Tohko isn’t!
Just then someone squeezed my hand.
They said something near my ear.
Tohko—!
It couldn’t be her, and yet the voice sounded like hers. Tohko was holding my hand, stroking my back, and encouraging me.
“It’s okay. It’s okay, Konoha. I’m here. Everything’s okay now. Try to breathe a little slower. That’s it, slowly… and let it out. That’s it. Good… it’s okay.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” The words I’d once heard Tohko say, whispered again and again in my ear.
My breathing gradually stabilized and my sweat dried.
Through my hazy vision, I could see a small
hand squeezing mine.
… Tohko?
No, it was someone else.
Tohko’s fingers were more slender. And they were pale.
Whose hand was this?
When I sluggishly lifted my face, eyes as cold as a doll’s were looking at me.
“… Takeda?”
“That’s right,” she answered in a composed voice.
“… Have you been the one holding my hand this whole time?”
“Did you think it was Tohko?”
When I couldn’t answer, she murmured in a voice holding no emotion, “… You called her name. Tohko, Tohko.”
So that’s what it was. It hadn’t been Tohko after all.
And that voice had been an illusion, too.
Takeda let go of my hand and stood up.
“But since you realized I’m not Tohko, it looks like your attack has subsided, so that’s good. Do you want to go to the nurse’s office just in case?”
“No, I’m fine now. Thanks.”
“You don’t look very fine.”
Again I couldn’t answer. I stood up, trying to turn my face away. I felt uncomfortable being seen like that.
“… Why did you come to the clubroom, Takeda?”
“I thought you might be here, so I stuck my head in. That’s when I saw you twitching on the floor.”
“… Oh.”
“We were talking about Ryu at lunch so I couldn’t ask, but did you and Nanase break up?”
“… We might end up doing that.”
Kotobuki had told me that she wanted me to call her Nanase on the fourteenth. That if I did that, she’d trust my feelings for her.
But the way things were right now, there was no way I could say her name.
“Are you not happy with Nanase?”
“I’m not happy with myself. It isn’t her…”
My chest ached sharply.
“I’m always confused… I can’t even decide which direction to go on my own. I don’t have any qualities that would… make Kotobuki like me,” I murmured in a husky voice, my eyes still turned away. I hated myself so much I wanted to throw up. My sweat dried and I felt a chill. “I wanted to be a little bit better as a person.”
Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 2 Page 11