by Otsuichi
I wiped the tears from my eyes and closed the lid on the box of memories in my left eye.
“May I step outside for a little bit?” I asked. “I’ll be right back.”
I opened the passenger-side door and got out. The air outside was freezing cold, not like inside the heated car.
I approached the base of the giant sign. It was held up by two metal poles. As I stood directly beneath it, it rose up like a perfectly vertical cliff.
In the scene painted on the sign, clouds soared across a brilliant blue sky. With the real sky covered by dark gray clouds, bright summer seemed to have come only to the square cutout of the sign. It must have belonged to some business.
I spent some time there, crawling beneath it, tapping on its metal supports, and looking at it from the reverse side. And then I noticed that I was smiling.
The man in the car was watching me from the driver’s seat. Thinking that I shouldn’t be making him wait like this, I returned to the car.
“A long time ago, the person I know used to play beneath that sign, back when it was still being built . . .”
In my eye’s memories, a man in work clothes had been painting the blue sky onto the sign. Kazuya, staring up at the sign, had accidently tripped over a paint can. Since his viewpoint was fairly high up, I guessed that he must have been nearly grown. But when he knocked over the paint can, he fled like a little child.
I couldn’t keep from laughing as I recalled the scene. But for some reason it evoked sadness as well.
The car began to move. I took the binder from my backpack and recorded the vision. I had been standing on the same spot that had been in my left eye’s memory. Joy welled up inside me. When I stood in front of the sign, I had felt the real-life scenery perfectly line up with the scenery of my vision. If you thought about how Kazuya and I were two completely different people who were raised in two distant places, it was a miracle.
The man driving the car said, “We’re in Kaede now.”
I was transfixed by the view that spread out beyond my window.
“By the way, there’s a place I want to stop at,” he said. “Do you mind if we go there first?”
I didn’t object to the request. After all, I didn’t know where to go from there anyway. My goal had been to get to Kazuya and Saori’s town, Kaede. I hadn’t really thought much past this point.
I have to find a place to stay. From there I’ll base my search for Saori. She should still be alive. Kazuya died only two, maybe three months ago. Saori must still live here.
Then I’ll find the house with the blue bricks, I thought.
At last, the small mountain town was outside my window. The highway ran like an artery through the center of it. Traffic was light and the road was quiet.
I saw no tall buildings through the windows, just a few small businesses and homes between stretches of wilderness overgrown with dead grass. A scraggy stray dog lifted its head to sniff at some garbage.
A large flatbed truck loaded with a pile of felled conifers passed by in the opposite lane. The man told me there was a cedar tree farm up in the mountains, and the town had grown up to support it. Absentmindedly I wondered if that kind of place would be hard on someone with allergies. I had hardly any of my memories, and yet I had some half-useless knowledge regarding cedar allergies. Maybe Saori has allergies and that’s why her nose is constantly running.
I saw a supermarket that made me worry if it ever had any customers. The paint on its sign was a depressingly drab color. An old man with a towel wrapped around his neck was wearily unloading cases of alcohol from the back of an old rusted minitruck.
In this lifeless town the air felt thin, and under the cloudy sky everything looked drab. Even the paint of the road markings had almost completely faded away. It seemed very barren for being only twenty minutes from the train station.
Several times as we drove through the town I almost spoke up. Places I’d seen in my left eye—shops, landscapes, streets—passed by my window.
I had no doubt that this was the town Kazuya had lived in. Each time I saw a familiar sight I wanted to stop the car and go to it. But I didn’t want to annoy the man driving, so I resisted the urge. I pressed my face and my palms against the glass window and took in everything I could see of the town.
“There’s this business just a little ways out,” said the driver.
“I’ve got something I want to deliver there.”
Soon the car left the highway. The buildings became fewer and I stopped recognizing things from the images of my left eye. Just as I was starting to feel a little disappointed, the car stopped in a parking lot.
The man got out of the car, picked up a box from the back seat, and said, “Once I’m done here, I’ll take you where you want to go.”
But I had already realized that wouldn’t be necessary. I climbed out of the car and looked at the building the man had entered.
It was a café. Built from round logs, it looked like a mountain lodge. A sign read MELANCHOLY GROVE. It had been in many of the visions of my left eye.
Saori worked there.
*
I pushed open the wooden door and stepped into the café. At once I was enveloped in the warmth from a heater. To the left of the entrance was the counter, to the right were the tables. I recognized all of it.
With each footstep, my shoes struck the floorboards with a peculiarly pleasant sound. I sat at the counter.
The owner emerged from the rear of the store and said, “Welcome.”
My pulse quickened. The man had appeared in a number of my left eye’s visions. A mustache grew across his bearlike face. He was as large in real life as he had appeared in the visions—enough so that I worried that he was uncomfortably cramped in the space behind the counter.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. I had been staring at his face.
“Nothing, I’m sorry.” Feeling self-conscious, I averted my eyes.
I looked around the café’s interior and saw familiar things—vases, flowers, decorations, wooden tables and chairs. The café was filled with a warm yellow light, the same color I had seen in the visions of my left eye.
“Can I take your order?” asked the owner.
I hastily opened the menu and said the first thing I saw.
“I’ll have a café au lait, please.”
The man who had given me the ride came from the back of the store. His delivery must have been for here. He and the owner seemed to know each other, and they were having a friendly conversation. Maybe the owner had asked him to pick up some supplies as a personal favor. The man who drove me glanced around the room. He seemed to be looking for someone.
There were two customers. One, a gray-haired woman, I figured to be around sixty. She was seated by a window, taking sips from her coffee cup as she read a hardcover book. She turned a page with a wrinkled hand. Her clothes were elegant. I wondered if she lived nearby. I got the impression that she was a regular here.
The other patron was at the back of the room. At first, I hadn’t noticed someone was there, as the seat was mostly out of the light. The person appeared to be male; his black clothes made him melt into the darkness.
The man who had driven me from the station looked at me sitting at the counter and told me he was ready to leave.
I thought for a second, then made up my mind.
“I’ll stay here. Thank you for the ride.”
The man waved goodbye and, looking back over his shoulder at me with a concerned expression, left the café. I felt like I’d seen his expression before. Maybe he’d been in one of the memories of my left eye. It seemed he was a regular, so the chances were high. Given how thick my binder had become, there were bound to be many faces I wouldn’t remember straightaway.
The owner returned with my café au lait and said, his voice just as I’d imagined it would be, “Here you go.”
This was my chance to see him close up. I couldn’t believe he was right there in front of my own eyes.
&
nbsp; Kazuya had frequented the café—probably because his sister worked there. I was sure of this because the place often showed up in the memories of my left eye. He had even been present when the store first opened. He would have been around middle school age then. The store had had a different owner at the time, a slightly older man.
I had seen that memory back home, when I’d looked at a coffee cup and my left eye had grown warm. The coffee shop was brand-new then, like a fresh pair of clothes ready for a night out. Kazuya had skipped school and, still dressed in his school uniform, sat at the back of the room. The gray-haired man behind the counter had been imprinted into his eye.
Everything has a past, I realized anew. This café has one too. Maybe I’m the only thing in here that doesn’t.
I felt odd. Here I was, walking around with that binder inside my backpack, carrying the fragments of the past of these people and the town. But in reality they were all strangers to me. “Excuse me . . .” I said to the owner. But as I started to talk, I couldn’t think of what to say next. To me he was someone I had seen many times before, but to him I was just another customer.
He raised his eyebrows as if to say, “Can I help you?”
“I know it’s strange to ask this all of a sudden . . .” I resolved to ask—it was something that had been bothering me. “Please tell me your name.”
Since speech hadn’t been recorded in the visions of my left eye, his name had long been a mystery to me. More than anything, I had wanted to ask what it was.
He was taken aback. “It’s Kimura, but . . .”
“Th-thank you.” I felt like I had embarrassed myself, and I sensed my cheeks reddening. At the same time, I was moved—I see, Kimura, then.
Kimura leaned his elbows on the counter and peered into my face. He was a large man, and that alone was intimidating. A smile spread like a bear showing its teeth. He didn’t laugh, maybe because other customers were around, but I was frightened enough that I almost screamed.
“Why did you want to know my name?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“Well, you see . . . I’ve been here for coffee before, and I’d heard someone say your name, and I just wanted to make sure I had it right . . .” Along the way I’d stopped comprehending the words that were coming out of my mouth, and my voice tapered off.
“You say you’ve been here before? How long ago was that?”
I hesitated. “About two years ago.”
It was all a lie.
Kimura crossed his arms and regarded me suspiciously. “You shouldn’t tell lies. I remember all of my customers’ faces.”
In a panic I blurted, “It’s not a lie.”
“Well, then . . .” Kimura thought for a moment. “There’s something that’s just recently been brought in here. See if you can spot it. Everything else should be about the same as it was two years ago.”
Just then the elderly woman sitting at the table by the window spoke up. “Now, Kimura, that’s too much. It’s impossible. I wouldn’t be able to answer that myself.”
I hadn’t noticed her eavesdropping. I was overcome with embarrassment.
Kimura looked over at her and said, “What, you were listening, Kyoko?”
The woman he had called Kyoko closed her book and gave Kimura a reproachful look.
“She’s right,” Kimura said, “that question was too—”
“I can answer it,” I declared. I pointed to a painting that hung on the wall. It was a painting of a lake, a sparkling lake in the middle of a black forest. It hadn’t been in the memory of my left eye, so I figured it must have been hung recently. In my binder, I had detailed records of the café’s interior that I could have checked. But I didn’t need to check.
Kimura’s round eyes widened in surprise. I knew I had answered correctly.
At the back of the room, the man shrouded in darkness stood up. I hadn’t seen it earlier because he had been in the shadows, but he had a pretty face. He had long hair and wore glasses. His black coat flowed past me. The man moved so quietly I couldn’t hear the sound of his footsteps on the floor. He stood at the register to pay.
“I’ll be damned,” Kimura muttered, scratching his head as he moved to the register. He took the money from the man in black and returned the man’s change.
As the man left the café, I had the feeling that he looked in my direction, and I knew that he had been listening to our conversation.
“The man that just left,” Kimura said, “he was the one who painted that. Have you heard of Shiozaki, the painter?”
I shook my head.
“No memory of him?”
I felt those words particularly fitting for me.
“I wonder why he moved all the way out to a place as remote as this. By the way, what brings you here?”
I thought about how to answer. Should I just tell the truth? A girl has been kidnapped. Maybe I should get his help.
But would he believe me? I wasn’t sure. If I said that my transplanted left eye showed me visions that had been burned into its retina, would he think it a lie? If I said that a girl was being held captive, would he laugh at me?
“I’m looking for someone,” I explained. It wasn’t incorrect. I was looking for Saori and Hitomi Aizawa—and the killer. “Oh, is there a woman who works here?”
Kimura said with a grin, “Did you come here looking for Saori too?”
I was startled for a moment. It was the first time I’d heard her name coming from another’s mouth.
“Looking for—too?”
“That girl has a fan—that jackass who gave you a ride, he comes here to see her. When I told him she was home sick with a cold he took off. You’d think the bastard could’ve at least ordered something first.”
He cursed.
When I heard Saori wasn’t there, I was both disappointed and relieved. I wouldn’t have known what to do, suddenly faced with her. I wasn’t ready for it yet.
But I had confirmed that she still worked at Melancholy Grove, just as she had in my left eye. She hadn’t quit her job after Kazuya’s death.
Gentle music played inside the café, so softly as to be nearly unnoticeable. As I listened to it, I held a sip of my café au lait in my mouth. I wondered if Kazuya had experienced the same taste.
I brushed my hand along the counter. The seat Kazuya had once sat in. The chair he had touched.
I stood up, I bent over, I leaned around, filling in the rough sketch of the café I had seen in my left eye. Kimura and Kyoko watched me curiously. I told myself to keep quiet and sat straight up in my seat, sipping my café au lait.
A woman came from the back of the café and announced to the owner, “I took out the trash.”
She wiped her hands on the front of her sweater. She had long hair in a ponytail, and probably because she had been outside, her cheeks—and her nose—were red.
“I lied to that guy from before,” Kimura told me.
The woman pulled a tissue from behind the counter and blew her nose into it. She noticed I was watching her and looked embarrassed.
“Sorry, my nose has been bad since I was born.”
It looked like it hadn’t been allergies after all. This was the first time I’d heard her speak. Just as I’d imagined, her voice sounded stuffed up, and yet it seemed to suit her.
“Saori Fuyutsuki . . .”
She tilted her head as if to ask how I knew her name.
I continued. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m . . .”
I couldn’t stop, and the words tumbled out: “I’m Kazuya’s friend.”
Saori and Kimura drew in their breath.
The truth is, this isn’t the first time we’ve met. I’ve known you for a long time. I feel like we’ve been together since we were little. On the outside, I kept my composure, but on the inside, I was crying.
3
“Come over to my house,” Saori said, after I told her I didn’t have a place to stay that night. I had the money to rent a room for the night, but t
here wasn’t really a proper hotel in Kaede. Though I felt bad for the imposition, I took Saori up on her offer. Truth be told, a part of me had hoped she would offer, and I was eager to see her home with my own eyes.
“Could you wait until we close for the night?”
I nodded. She wasn’t too busy with work, so she talked with me.
I still only half believed I was seeing her moving and talking. I stared at her face. It must have been the same feeling as reuniting with a long-lost relative. With my almost nonexistent memories, she was the closest thing to a relative I had.
But to her, I was a person who had appeared out of nowhere. I started to forget that fact.
After Kyoko paid her bill and left, Kimura said, “That’s enough for today. I don’t think we’ll be getting any more customers anyway. Take the girl and go on home. Since she’s Kazuya’s friend . . .”
There was concern for her in his voice. I realized that Kazuya’s death had badly bruised their world.
Saori and I left the café. For the first time, I walked at her side—although in my memories I’d done it many times before. I remembered how it had looked.
The outside was cold, and as soon as I’d exited the café I felt my body begin to chill. My cheeks, having relaxed in the warm air of the heater, tensed up as if I’d been slapped. The lighted walls and the sign seemed to float in the darkness. The road cut through a cedar forest and was quiet and dark.
Sniffling, Saori said, “Where we’re going—it’s actually my uncle’s.”
“I heard about that from Kazuya.”
After they lost their parents, the two children were taken in by a man who lived in the neighborhood. I’d seen it in my left eye.
“The two of us are living together now.”
“What about your aunt?”
“Just a little before Kazuya’s accident, she caught pneumonia and died.”
I hadn’t seen that in my left eye. I realized that there was a lot I still didn’t know. The visions I’d seen were only fragments of what Kazuya had experienced in his life.
The area around us was lonely, with few homes. Saori had said that it was about a fifteen-minute walk to her house from the café. My teeth chattered from the cold. There were many trees on either side of the road. I saw a pile of abandoned cars formed into a giant clump of rust. Deserted shacks emerged from the darkness.