The Book of Heroes

by Miyuki Miyabe

  The metaphor occurred to U-ri suddenly, but it seemed very appropriate. She could see it in Michiru’s slender form and lonely eyes—she was a princess taken from her home, driven from her palace, and made a prisoner of the enemy.

  And Hiroki Morisaki was her knight in shining armor, riding forth to save his princess.

  “A hero—”

  The word came unbidden from U-ri’s mouth. Aju looked up.

  “Morisaki wanted to be your hero, didn’t he?”

  Michiru nodded.

  U-ri noticed Aju’s beady black eyes staring at her. His whiskers moved as though he were going to say something, but the mouse was quiet.

  “But the hero and the princess are supposed to live happily ever after—once they’ve dealt with the enemies—isn’t that how the stories go?”

  The stories…!

  “Why did Morisaki do it? And why now?”

  Tears were welling in Michiru’s eyes again. No, those aren’t tears. It’s blood flowing from the latest, freshest wound in her heart.

  “It’s my fault. He tried to save me. Just like a real hero—but once we got into eighth grade, they started picking on him.”

  In eighth grade, Hiroki and Michiru had been separated, placed in different classes. They had a new homeroom teacher as well.

  “They took Mrs. Kanehashi away from our class after what happened with the teasing incident.”

  The charges were completely false, but for a time, things worked out—for Michiru at least. Her new class was much more laid back, and her new homeroom teacher kept an eye on things to make sure what had happened to Michiru the year before didn’t happen again.

  But things were different for Hiroki.

  “When the kids were teasing me, hardly anybody knew about it—teachers or students. I doubt the students in the other classes heard a thing.”

  But everyone had heard about Hiroki Morisaki’s heroic stand. And not everybody liked it. Not just students either; some of the teachers hadn’t looked favorably on it either.

  “When Morisaki called out the class, he called out the other teachers in school too, for not coming to help Mrs. Kanehashi.”

  Some of the teachers thought Hiroki had been out of bounds to criticize them. Gradually, opinion shifted against him.

  The boy thinks he’s a hero.

  We’ve got to do something about this. It’s disruptive to the class.

  A student should know his place.

  Of Hiroki’s critics his new eighth-grade teacher was one of the worst.

  U-ri’s heart ached so much she trembled with fear that it would burst. She was almost afraid to ask the next question, but she had to. “You mean, Morisaki’s teacher was actually encouraging students to pick on him?”

  Michiru stared back at U-ri through her tears but said nothing.

  “And the two boys that he stabbed, they were working for this teacher?”

  At last Michiru nodded once, then twice.

  It was getting difficult for U-ri to breathe. She paused, trying to calm herself down before speaking again. “What was his teacher’s name?”

  “Mr. Hata.” Mr. Hata was an older teacher in his fifties. A sociology teacher, Michiru told her. U-ri felt her throat tighten even more.

  “What happened to Mr. Hata after the incident? What is he doing now?” Aju asked.

  “He’s on leave. Like me.”

  Kibogaoka Middle School had descended into chaos after the incident. Some of the teachers wanted to deal with the matter head on, properly, while others just stalled, trying to make sure the blame didn’t fall on them. Early on in the ensuing struggle, Mrs. Kanehashi had been suspended. That, it turned out, had been Mr. Hata’s doing. He claimed that the teasing issue Morisaki had been involved in the year before hadn’t been handled properly, and the principal and board had gone along. Mrs. Kanehashi was without allies—locked up in a tower of her own. She had clearly drawn the short straw in all this.

  “Aju, I’d like to amend what I said earlier,” U-ri began. “I think we should send the principal and Mr. Hata to the nameless land first.”

  “I already told you we can’t do that!”

  The mouse turned to Michiru. “Do Hiroki’s parents know about all this?”

  Michiru’s face darkened and she shook her head. “I don’t think Morisaki said anything to his parents about what happened last year. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing he would go out of his way to say.”

  That made sense enough to U-ri. Hiroki wasn’t the type to go home and tell his parents about what he had done that day—even if it had been standing up for a girl in class.

  “And he didn’t tell them about it when he started getting picked on?”

  “I don’t think so, Aju,” U-ri said before Michiru could answer. “It’s not the kind of thing you can talk about so easily.”

  U-ri closed her eyes. She finally understood. It made sense. When Hiroki had come home suddenly from school that day and run to the shower, it was because he’d been picked on at school. He was washing mud out of his hair, or dirt off his face, or blood from a wound.

  Hiroki Morisaki was a tough kid. It would’ve taken a lot to get him down. But his situation at the time was anything but normal. Imagine getting picked on by half the class, with your own homeroom teacher as the ringleader. From under the bright shining flag of education, Mr. Hata had called his troops to battle and declared open season on bullying Hiroki. No wonder none of the kids had shown any hesitation. U-ri was sure there had been plenty of willing participants.

  It was about as evil a situation as she could imagine. Certainly nothing a single middle school student could stand up to.

  But Hiroki Morisaki hadn’t caved. Something wrong was still wrong, no matter how many people were doing it. He didn’t bow to the bullies. He knew he had to fight them.

  That was why he went looking for more power. He was lured by the giant, shining coin of the Hero, and when he grabbed for it, there on the other side was the dark, bewitching glimmer of the King in Yellow.

  Which is how the dark king looking for destruction and the young boy looking for power had met.

  It was anger that led Hiroki to become the last vessel, after all. Not blind rage, but justified anger. Righteous anger.

  Regret and sadness filled U-ri’s chest to breaking. Somewhere buried beneath the vestments of the allcaste, Yuriko Morisaki was crying.

  “So the two boys Hiroki stabbed were the main conspirators, er, the leaders?” Aju asked, carefully choosing his words.

  Michiru showed no such hesitation. “They were Mr. Hata’s flunkies. With their own teacher egging them on, they thought they could do anything—and they were right.”

  Aju clucked his tiny tongue. “Their kind always appears in times of war.”

  U-ri raised an eyebrow at Aju. “War?”

  “That’s right, war. This is a war.”

  The King in Yellow must have been pleased. The story of the Hero was always a story of war.

  “Lady U-ri?” Sky called out hesitantly. As usual, U-ri had forgotten he was even there. “Might you ask if the Lady Michiru heard anything about the Book of Elem from your brother? About how he obtained it, how he used it. Perhaps she knows something?”

  Sky was still looking at Michiru as if she were the strangest thing he’d ever seen in his entire life. His eyes were filled with reverence—or possibly fear. Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard.

  “When we first saw her, Lady Michiru did something that troubled me. She turned to you—and you were invisible at the time—and called out for ‘Morisaki,’ yes?”

  That’s right. Didn’t she ask if he’d come back? Which meant she had reason to expect Hiroki to return, invisible, to the library. More than expect. She had been waiting for him to come. That was why she had come to the library.

  U-ri gave Sky a look to tell him that she understood. Then she turned back to Michiru, who was wiping at her eyes with the handkerchief that was by now so soggy it did her lit
tle good at all. U-ri lightly clapped her hands together to get her attention and leaned forward in her chair. “Michiru. I need to talk to you about something, something very important upon which Morisaki’s life might depend.”

  Michiru jerked upright, nearly dropping her handkerchief on the floor.

  “That’s why,” U-ri continued, “I need you to try to answer me as honestly as possible. Don’t hide anything. All right?”

  Michiru looked at U-ri with her bloodshot left eye and nodded.

  “We book-spirits know that he had obtained a very powerful magical book as his ally.”

  Michiru didn’t look startled by this. She only nodded lightly.

  “It is called the Book of Elem. Do you know of it?”

  “Morisaki talked about it, yes.”

  “But you never saw it?”

  She shook her head. “He said it was very important—and besides, he had taken it without permission, so he kept it hidden.”

  “When was this?” Aju cut in impatiently, but U-ri tapped one finger on his head and went on. “You like books, don’t you, Michiru?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Morisaki also liked books?”

  “Well, he didn’t not like them, but he wasn’t a bookworm like me. Still, I think I got him more interested than he had been. He always liked hearing me tell him about things I’d read.”

  U-ri nodded slowly. “All right, Michiru. Now did Morisaki ever tell you about a cottage in the mountains with a reading room? A place with many old books?”

  A lump formed in Michiru’s thin throat. She swallowed. “I know about the reading room. He brought us there once, the three of us.”

  “The three of you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kanehashi drove us in her car.”

  It had been right after spring break started. They had gone out for a drive under a blue sky—a perfect drive on a perfect day, Michiru described it to her with watery eyes. Eighth grade had started. Michiru wasn’t getting teased anymore, and the worst of it had yet to start for Hiroki. For the two of them, it was the most peaceful time they ever had together.

  “Morisaki wasn’t the type to be friends with someone like me, not really.” Michiru crossed her legs and sighed. “When we first started out on the library committee together, we hardly spoke. I didn’t know what to say to him, and he probably had no idea what to say to me.”

  But after he had declared himself her knight in shining armor, Hiroki’s position had changed. Or maybe it was his whole way of thinking.

  “He tried to be my friend. But we didn’t have much in common—the only thing we could talk about was books. I think it was hard on him coming up with anything else at first. Then one day he told me about his strange great-uncle. That’s when I heard about the cottage.”

  He had told her about the ramshackle place up in the mountains—like a haunted house—filled with rare books from around the world. Michiru had been intrigued, and midway through the third quarter, when the teasing had finally subsided, she had been happy when Hiroki mentioned it again.

  “I told him I’d like to see it someday—I don’t know why.”

  Hiroki had invited her to come. “I’ve been wanting to go back myself.” He even remembered how to get there. “You can’t take a train, though. It’s way up in the mountains—you need a car. Hey, I got an idea. Let’s ask Mrs. Kanehashi!”

  Mrs. Kanehashi had been interested too. But being a teacher, she said she needed their parents’ permission.

  “Then Morisaki said that if they asked his parents, there was no way they would give the okay. The place was inherited, and until final ownership was sorted out they couldn’t just wander in. He said we’d have to go in secret.”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Kanehashi. I checked it out when I was there last year—you could easily put your hand through one of the windows and open the lock. We’d be in and out and no one would know the difference. It’s not like we’re going to do anything bad.”

  U-ri was surprised. This was a side of Hiroki she never knew about. Though it was like him to remember details like where the windows had been placed—something she never would’ve noticed.

  “Mrs. Kanehashi didn’t get angry?”

  Michiru grinned devilishly then, her good eye twinkling. “She said no way at first, but eventually, Morisaki wore her down.”

  “So he snuck out for a drive,” U-ri muttered. “And here I thought he was always too busy with his clubs and baseball…”

  Aju squeaked vigorously at her, and she realized what she was saying. Michiru was giving her a questioning look. Uh-oh!

  U-ri coughed loudly. “So, Michiru, what did you think of that reading room you saw?”

  “You know, I’ve been there myself,” Aju hurriedly added. “Before I started hanging out with U-ri, I sat there for a good many years gathering dust.”

  “That’s right,” Michiru said, looking at the mouse. “You’re a book too, aren’t you!”

  Whew, she’s going to let it slide.

  “When I first heard about it from Morisaki I had this image in my mind, but when I saw the real thing, I realized how far off I had been. I’d never seen books so old, and all in one place like that—more than even here in the school library.” Michiru looked off into the distance. “The drive was a lot of fun. We listened to music, talked, stopped for lunch, enjoyed the scenery…”

  Michiru lowered her voice and told them about their arrival in the mountains. The old wooden cottage with its fading paint and cracked windows let them in as easily as Hiroki had predicted, even if Mrs. Kanehashi had been sweating bullets the whole time.

  “I remember feeling very cold the closer we got to the reading room. I think maybe I was a little queasy from the drive.”

  “Nah, the air in there’s stale,” Aju said. Michiru didn’t respond. Her brows were furrowed with effort as she tripped back through her memories of the cottage.

  “I remember Morisaki was all smiles. Mrs. Kanehashi was nervous enough for all three of us, but he was really excited—he was practically floating.”

  Flashlight in hand, he had urged them on toward the reading room. Mrs. Kanehashi and Michiru had to run to keep up with him.

  “I was scared,” Michiru said, and an actual shiver ran through her. “That reading room—it was like the room itself was made of books. And it frightened me. I remember feeling my body grow heavy when I stepped inside.”

  But Michiru hadn’t said anything at the time. She hadn’t wanted to ruin Hiroki’s mood.

  “Mrs. Kanehashi was sure surprised. She’s great in English, of course, and she had also studied Spanish—but she said she probably couldn’t read a single book in the place.”

  Hiroki had gone into the reading room and lost himself in the books, not even responding when Michiru or Mrs. Kanehashi tried to talk to him. Michiru found it hard to breathe in there; she had to go outside several times for some fresh air. Mrs. Kanehashi had joined her.

  So Hiroki had plenty of time to himself in there. Time enough to grab the Book of Elem and Aju and sneak them out without either of the other two noticing.

  “Lady U-ri?” Sky said from behind her, startling her yet again.

  “W-what?”

  “I was wondering if you could ask the Lady Michiru something for me. Ask her how your brother was looking at the books that day.”

  “Huh?”

  “That is, was he merely plucking books off the shelves at random, or did he seem to have some purpose in his search?”

  Michiru sat with her face pale, lost in her memories of the reading room.

  U-ri glanced sidelong at Aju. “Wait. You were there. Can’t you answer Sky’s question?”

  Aju blanched. “Er, maybe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

  “See, until Hiroki actually touched my binding and pulled me from the shelf I was, er, asleep,” Aju confessed, his eyes hidden behind his long tail. “Books sleep too, you know. When no one is using us or needs us, we kind of doze o
ff.”

  “And the Sage was asleep too?”

  “Well, the Sage is a special case, that old geezer, he—”

  “Wasn’t asleep like you were, then.”

  At least that explains why Aju’s been mum about how he met Hiroki until now. He doesn’t remember! It also explained why Aju hadn’t recognized Michiru.

  “The moment when Hiroki stuck me in his backpack and I realized I was leaning right up against the Book of Elem, boy, did I scream. But it was already too late.”

  U-ri called to Michiru. She looked up. Her lips were white.

  “Did it seem like Morisaki was looking for a particular book in the reading room that day?”

  Michiru thought about that for a moment. Her left eye wandered. At length, she shook her head apologetically. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I just felt so queasy, and I didn’t want Morisaki to know, see.” Then Michiru’s good eye opened wider. “But that reminds me. Morisaki did say something strange when we were planning the trip in the first place. He said that the reading room and all the old books in it seemed like something from another world. He said, ‘I’ve been having this dream of that place since I went there with my family last year.’ He said that he had heard someone calling to him from the reading room. Just calling over and over. ‘Hiroki, Hiroki.’”

  U-ri felt an icy chill stop at each nerve ending along her spine.

  When they had visited Ichiro Minochi’s cottage together as a family in December of the year before, Hiroki had been right in the middle of playing knight in shining armor to Michiru’s damsel in distress. He was being a hero, looking for allies, trying to defeat his enemies. And something in the library called to him. Something had called his name—

  The King in Yellow. No, it was the Hero itself. Both sides of the coin.

  “That good enough for you, Sky?” U-ri asked out of the corner of her mouth. He did not reply. She looked and saw he was lost again, staring at Michiru’s face.

  Aju lightly whacked U-ri’s cheek with his tail. “I’ve got a question for Michiru too.”

  U-ri nodded. The girl looked up, her face drained of what little strength it had.

  “Michiru, a little bit ago, you called out for Hiroki—you were groping for him with your hands. You asked whether he’d come back. What did you mean by that?”