The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  Now it is true in every place and age that the surest way to fire up a child’s curiosity is to tell them that something is forbidden. Yuriko leaned forward. Her palm pressed down on the page of the book. “Why? Why can’t I sing it?”

  “Please, you’re pushing kind of hard.”

  Yuriko hurriedly lifted up on her hand. She felt the book tremble, like he was catching his breath and shaking himself off after having the wind knocked out of him.

  “Because,” the book said after a pause, “that’s a bad song.”

  Yuriko was silent for a while. In her mind she was replaying the scene of her brother singing the song while that strange figure towered over him. Because she was now fully awake, she felt like she could remember the scene in much better detail.

  Again, the book shivered. Yuriko felt as though she was touching human skin again.

  “That’s right. That’s it.”

  “That’s what?”

  “It,” the book muttered and fell silent.

  “Wait. You could see what I saw just now, couldn’t you? Are you reading my mind? Do you have ESP or something?” Then Yuriko laughed at her own question. If anyone had ESP, it was she. After all, here she was talking to a book.

  “Something like that,” the book said.

  Wait, Yuriko thought. He sounds frightened now.

  “Is it something scary?”

  “You mean you weren’t frightened?”

  She remembered her brother tapping his forehead on the floor. The giant silhouette looking down at him. Back arching, proud.

  Suddenly a phrase sprang into her mind. “I alone am king of the castle.”

  “Huh?” said the book. “What’s that you just said?”

  “I said ‘king of the castle.’” Yuriko stared at the book. “That big shape I saw—he was dressed like a king. Like the ones you see in picture books and the movies. He was wearing a crown.”

  “Did you see his cape? All tattered and torn, wasn’t it?”

  That’s it! She had thought the silhouette looked swollen in places, like a balloon, but now she realized it had just been a billowing cape that swept from the shape’s neck all the way down to its ankles.

  “It was too dark to see it clearly.”

  “Then, did you see its face?” The book sounded so forceful, like this question was very important, that Yuriko reflexively pulled her hand away from the page.

  “It was too dark.”

  “So you didn’t see the face at all?” the book confirmed, his voice soft and whispery again.

  Yuriko quickly replaced her hand on the page. “No, I didn’t.”

  “That’s good then,” said the book. The book seemed to relax, the tension in his pages easing.

  “So is this it all that scary? Is it a king of some place?”

  The book was silent, almost as if it had decided to go back to being a regular book. But Yuriko could still feel him breathing against the palm of her hand. He was breathing like grown-ups did when they were worried about something. The book inhaled deeply, exhaled, then waited for what seemed like forever before remembering to breathe in again.

  Once, two years before, her father had failed to pass a routine health check-up at his company. He had gone in for more tests, failed again, and was sent to a big hospital for even more tests. While this was going on, her mother would sit at the kitchen table by herself, breathing just like that. With each breath out, she was imagining all the terrible things that could go wrong, and it took her until the next breath to shake them out of her head. Luckily, in the end it turned out to be nothing serious, and the deep breathing stopped. Still, its rhythm remained etched in Yuriko’s memory.

  How terrible could it be?

  Why was Hiroki bowing to it?

  A dim light began to flicker in Yuriko’s head.

  “What if that’s why he did it? What if Hiroki hurting those boys had something to do with that king?”

  The red book jerked beneath her fingers.

  Yuriko’s eyes went wide. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  The book didn’t answer, so Yuriko grabbed him with both hands and gave him a good shake. “Tell me! Tell me!”

  “M-m-miss! Gently, please! Just calm down.”

  “And how am I supposed to do that?”

  The book grumbled. “You’re right, okay? It’s bad. Evil.”

  And it makes people do evil things—

  Yuriko felt her knees go all wobbly. She slumped back into the chair, clutching the book to her.

  From the day her brother had disappeared up until this very moment, Yuriko hadn’t heard one single explanation that made sense of what Hiroki had done. Not from her parents, her teachers, the police, or even herself. Every time she had gone looking for one, she had been told not to worry, or that she didn’t need to know. What the book had just told her as it quaked with fear (probably because she had shaken it so roughly) had been her first real answer.

  Uh-oh, I think I’m going to cry.

  “I knew he wouldn’t have done something like that. I knew it.” She really did begin to cry now. One drop, then two drops splattered on the cover of the red book. “It’s not like him. I know him.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” came the red book’s gentle assurance. “Your brother’s a good kid. He would never hurt his friends, let alone take a life.”

  Yuriko looked up. “You know him?”

  “Sure I know him. Not for very long, mind you, but I was always nearby.”

  Yuriko wiped the tears from her face. Of course. The book was on Hiroki’s bookshelf.

  “Believe me, miss. I tried to stop it with all my might. I told him to be careful. But he didn’t hear me until it was too late. It moved too fast…And it’s much stronger than I am,” the red book added, bowing its head in shame—or at least, that was how Yuriko imagined it.

  The book sighed. “I’m no match for it. It is the Hero, after all.”

  “The hero?”

  Yuriko was surprised to finally hear the dark figure’s name. But the name didn’t fit. A hero was noble and strong. In history books, the heroes always saved the day. In sports, the one who set a new record was a hero. And in stories, the hero was always the main character, the good guy. How could a hero be something so evil?

  “Wait, you’re joking, aren’t you. A hero can’t be bad.”

  “I’m sure that’s what they taught you, yes.”

  “Nobody taught me that. It’s just common sense.”

  “Common sense?” The red book sighed again. “Fine, whatever you like. Oh, and it’s not ‘a hero.’ It’s ‘the Hero.’ It’s a title, not a name.”

  Suddenly, the book felt different under her hand. He was no longer warm, and she couldn’t feel him breathing. It was as though the strange talking being in her hand had become nothing more than a dusty old book.

  “Hey, wait!” Yuriko shook the red book. She tried holding it upside down by the cover, so the pages fluttered in the air. She tossed it and stomped on it and did everything she could think of short of ripping out the pages, but the book was silent.

  “I don’t believe it!” Yuriko cried out loud. “That’s not fair. You—you’re mean!”

  Sadly, she soon found that books are not easily swayed by little girls’ tears. Yuriko gritted her teeth, and summoning all her strength, she flung the book hard across the room. It opened in midair before slamming into the wall and dropping onto the floor face down, its pages bent beneath it.

  There was no cry of pain, no angry shout. The book didn’t glare at her. It didn’t do anything.

  Yuriko left the book where it lay and walked out of Hiroki’s room, her head filled with the rush of victory, but her feet dragging in failure.

  She didn’t tell her parents about the red book. What would she say? It seemed like a dream even to herself, though she knew she had been awake. That evening, all they talked about was Yuriko’s return to school the next day, and how her mother would be bringing her in for her first day bac
k, and how she was to play with her friends just like she had before—and nothing else.

  The red book was left abandoned, crumpled on the floor by the wall.

  The following day, Yuriko went to school as planned. When she got there, the head teacher, the principal, Mrs. Kiuchi, and Mr. Katayama were all there to greet her in the principal’s office. Her mother must have bowed to them a hundred times. The teachers all bowed back. Then Mr. Katayama took Yuriko to class.

  After first period ended, during the first break, Kana ran over and hugged her. She looked like she was going to cry. I was so worried. I’m so glad you’re back.

  The other students in class were smiling, or looking sympathetic, or just pretending not to notice she was back—but no one was cold or angry, as she had feared they would be.

  Whew, she thought. Everything’s back to normal. Except for the fact that my brother’s gone, nothing’s changed. Yuriko felt the tension in her heart ease.

  But it was all a sham.

  After third period, Yuriko joined Kana for a bathroom break. That was where it happened. Some girls from the next class over walked into the bathroom just as they were about to leave—she had seen their faces before, but didn’t know their names. One of the girls saw her, then did a double-take. Her eyes sparkled. Not a bright sparkle, but a dull, dark sparkle, like the twinkling of a lantern at the bottom of a deep well. Here’s something fun, her eyes said. Here’s something freakish. Let’s play with it and see if we can make it cry. Yuriko could feel hands reaching out of those eyes, grabbing for her. The feeling was intense.

  Let’s get out of here!

  As they passed, Yuriko’s hand lightly brushed one of the girl’s hands. So lightly, she almost didn’t notice—the kind of contact that happens all the time in a crowded school. But the girl leaped away from her like she’d been burned.

  “Whoa! S-sorry!”

  All the other girls around her squealed with terror.

  “You’re Morisaki, aren’t you?” the girl she had touched said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to run into you, honest! So please, pretty please, don’t stab me!”

  Her voice echoed off the cold walls and ceiling of the bathroom. The girls continued screaming, like they were under attack, rushing to be the first out of the bathroom. The swinging doors to the hallway burst open. The girls ran out into the hall, where their screams quickly changed into whooping bouts of laughter.

  Yuriko stood still in the doorway.

  She glanced over at Kana. Her friend was so pale, Yuriko thought she might faint.

  Fourth period rushed by and Yuriko barely even noticed. Whenever she took her eyes off Kana, Kana would be staring at her, and when she turned toward her friend, Kana would look away, an apologetic look on her face.

  The next incident took place during lunchtime.

  Mr. Katayama was helping the students pass out lunch trays, when a woman about the same age as Yuriko’s mother came up to him in a hurry. She wasn’t a teacher at the school, and she wasn’t dressed like one of the assistants either. It took Yuriko a while to realize that she was the mother of one of her classmates.

  She wasn’t just in a hurry, she was angry. She grabbed Mr. Katayama and started talking rapidly before turning and calling her daughter—a girl named Fukuyama, whom Yuriko hardly knew—to her, pulling the girl close to her side. Every so often she would turn and find Yuriko in the room, then glare icily at her. Mr. Katayama grew red in the face, and he managed to coax the woman out into the hallway, but not before everyone heard what she was saying.

  Criminal.

  Murderer.

  My child. No explanation. Unconscionable.

  What is the school thinking? What about her parents?

  Even in fragmented snippets, her point was crystal clear.

  It was then that Yuriko first noticed several of her classmates were absent that day. Far more than usual.

  I’m not a criminal.

  I’m not a murderer.

  But Hiroki was. He had killed another boy. And she was his sister. Who would want their own child to sit in the same classroom as the sister of a murderer? That was what Fukuyama’s mother was saying. She hadn’t heard that Yuriko would be coming back to school today. If she had, there was no way she would have let it slide. What was the school thinking?

  Fukuyama’s mother had been trembling. Her daughter too. They were scared of Yuriko. And Yuriko thought she detected the faintest trace of something else in the mother’s eyes. Disdain. They were mocking her. How could she be so stupid to come back to school? Did she really think everything was going to be just the way it was before?

  Yuriko looked up to find every head in the room looking in her direction. Kana was one of them.

  Then, one by one, they turned away. They looked off to the side. They looked down at their lunch trays. There was the sound of clattering dishes. But not a single student in the entire room was talking.

  All conversation in the room had been sucked into the tiny black hole at its center. A black hole named Yuriko.

  Yuriko threw her books and her pen case into her bag and left school before Mr. Katayama could come back into the room.

  I’m going home. I’m going home. I’m going home. A little music box was playing a dark tune over and over in Yuriko’s mind. Go home. Go home. Never go back to school.

  There’s no place for you there anymore.

  Her knees buckled, her jaw sagged. When she ran, the world seemed to sway around her, and the pavement turned to wet sand beneath her feet.

  Back home, she ran into the living room and grabbed on to her mother. Then she cried and wailed louder than she ever had. Louder than Fukuyama’s mom.

  For a long while, the two of them sat there, hugging and crying.

  Yuriko wouldn’t be going back to school. She would never go to that school again.

  Late that night, Yuriko went back to her brother’s room. She didn’t want her parents to know she was in there, so she left the light off. The light coming in through the window from the streetlamp outside was enough.

  The red book was back on the bookshelf. It was sitting at the edge of one of the front rows. Her mother must have come in here and picked it up. The bent pages had been smoothed out.

  Yuriko stepped closer and gently touched a finger to the book.

  The magic was back, she could tell that instantly. The jacket felt warm to the touch.

  “That you, little miss?” the book asked in her head. Yuriko nodded silently. She began to cry as quietly as she could. The more she cried, the more tears came.

  She grabbed the book off the shelf and hugged it to her chest.

  “Y’know, that kinda hurt the other day,” the book said, pouting.

  “I’m sorry,” Yuriko said, the tears rolling down her face.

  The book sighed. “Sounds like you got hurt too.” A gentle vibration came through the book’s cover. Yuriko nodded, hanging her head, and she slumped down against the wall with the book in her arms.

  She told him what had happened that day at school. She kept backtracking, adding details, and crying in between parts of the story so that in the end it must have sounded like a tangled mess, but the red book seemed to understand. The whole time she talked, he said only one thing. It’s okay. Don’t cry. No matter what she said, no matter how much she cried. It’s okay. Don’t cry.

  “It’s like that for everybody, you know,” he told her when Yuriko had finally finished her story and her tears had dried. “Everyone feels the same thing you do, little miss, when the Hero takes someone.”

  When the book spoke, it sounded almost like a song. There was a melody to his words. It was a song about the river of tears that people had cried over the ages, over countless sorrows.

  “No one can do anything about it. I’m sorry, but no one can undo what has been done.”

  You can’t turn back time.

  “You’ll be at home for a while now, won’t you, miss? You should take it easy. Time m
ay be your enemy now, but in a while, it will become your ally.”

  “You mean I’ll forget?”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  No I won’t. How could I?

  “But my brother is gone.” Her brother’s absence had stopped the clock for Yuriko. The whole Morisaki family was frozen in time. “Remember what we were talking about yesterday?” Yuriko asked, holding the book up in front of her face. “You know more than you’ve told me, don’t you. If you know why my brother did what he did, I’ll bet you know where he is now.”

  The red book hesitated.

  Bingo, Yuriko thought. “Where is he? Where’s Hiroki? What happens to people taken by the Hero? Does the Hero bring them somewhere? Is he in some kind of prison?” Her questions came out one after the other, with barely a pause between them. “Hiroki didn’t stab his friend because he wanted to, right? The Hero made him do it, right?”

  After a pause, the book answered. “That’s correct. That’s in its nature. It manipulates people, starts wars, turns the world on its head.”

  Yuriko had to think hard to understand some of the words he was using.

  “The Hero starts wars? That’s weird. The heroes I know about are always ending wars.”

  That was how it was in all the stories. That was how it was in her textbooks.

  “Beginnings, endings, they’re all the same, miss. They’re the head and the tail of the same beast.”

  This she understood even less. She wished the book would stop talking in riddles and just get to the point. “So my brother isn’t bad, then. He’s not the evil one. Something evil grabbed him and made him do those things.”

  Hiroki is a victim.

  “I have to help him!” she said out loud, and then she had the strange sensation that the words took shape as she said them and floated up in the air of the darkened room, glittering as they rose.

  “I have to go help him. You have to tell me where he is.” Then a light went off in her head. “Wait, the answer is written inside you, isn’t it? All of this is written inside you. That’s how you know so much about the Hero!”

  Even before she had finished talking, Yuriko tried opening the book. But to her surprise, he resisted.