I sat down on a folding chair and started reading Takeda’s report.
The sound of rustling paper mingled with the subdued patter of the rain falling.
It sounded to me like the gentle, pleasant rhythm of listening to a lullaby in my mother’s lap.
Eventually the rain lifted, and the setting sun filled the room with golden light.
I wondered how much time had passed.
I’d been so absorbed in Takeda’s report that when I felt something like a cat’s tail tickling the back of my neck, I grabbed at it instinctively.
Huh?
It wasn’t a cat. It was one of Tohko’s braids.
I turned my head and saw that Tohko must have returned from the library at some point, because she had pulled a folding chair up and sat down directly behind me. She was leaning forward, reading the report over my shoulder.
Oh my God!
Tohko was staring intently at the report, playing with her lip with one of her fingers, looking utterly focused. She hadn’t even noticed that I’d grabbed hold of one of her braids.
On the contrary, she leaned even farther forward, to the point that her cheek was practically brushing against mine. Her drooping eyelashes and the downy hair on her face glowed golden. Just a little bit closer and I could have turned my head and kissed her—that’s how dangerously close she was.
“T-T-T-Toh ko!”
“Can you turn to the next page, Konoha?”
Amazing.
Tohko simply whispered into my ear, not the least bit flustered and never taking her eyes off the report.
“Uh, but…”
“Hurry…”
She was totally absorbed in it. Once she got like this, nothing could break her out of it.
A book girl’s ears were closed to the world.
“O-okay.”
I gave up and flipped to the next page of the report.
I could feel Tohko’s breath, which smelled of violets, and the warmth of her body, and the soft hair of her braid tickling my throat as we read Takeda’s report in the tiny room dappled by the deepening evening.
We finished reading about the time the soft golden light in the room had deepened to the red of evening.
Tohko let out a small sigh.
Then finally she noticed my bright-red face and the prickly tension in my nerves, and she jerked away.
“Uh—ack! I’m sorry!”
Since she’d thrown herself back so suddenly, her chair lurched and tipped over backward with a huge THUD.
“Oh man—”
“Owwwuh. I… I landed on my butt,” Tohko whined tearfully. She’d hit the ground flat on her backside, revealing most of her thighs.
“Are you okay?”
“My butt hurts.”
Tohko sat back up, straightening the hem of her skirt.
When our eyes met, she flushed with embarrassment, then quickly smiled at me with kind eyes.
“But I’m glad that little Chia seems to be happier.”
A smile spread over my lips as well. “Yeah, me, too.”
I grabbed Tohko’s hand and pulled her to her feet.
I offered Takeda’s report to her deferentially. “Your meal, mademoiselle.”
Lit by the last rays of sunlight, Tohko sat with her knees together and legs tilted slightly to one side, her manners much better than usual as she accepted the report. “Thank you.”
She grinned and paged through the report, starting over again from the beginning.
Each time she finished a page, she tore it out and began nibbling demurely at its corner.
“Bleh,” she murmured, a somewhat forlorn expression coloring her face. But she chewed methodically, taking her time before swallowing. “It’s really bitter…”
The report probably had very little of the sweetness or tenderness that Tohko had been expecting.
She continued to eat away at the bitter, bitter report philosophically, though I was sure there couldn’t be much of it that was palatable.
Tohko’s pale skin, her school uniform, and her long braids were all caught in the bewitching, yet somehow forlorn colors of the setting sun.
On the roof, Tohko had told Takeda that the sun that sinks below the horizon would re-emerge in a new day.
No matter how awful or painful something may be, a new and different day would surely come.
And perhaps in repeating this process, people changed as they moved toward a new day.
The pain you never thought could heal might eventually fade.
I hoped that somewhere Miu was smiling, though she had leaped to her death that day.
Even if I could never see her again, she was somewhere under this mellow evening sky.
All things pass away.
I opened my packet of paper and wrote.
Over the faint crinkling of paper as she ate the report, Tohko asked, “What are you writing?”
“I’m not telling.”
“Konoha… you should write a novel sometime. You’ll let me read it if you write one, won’t you?”
Tohko said it so suddenly that my heart jumped.
When I looked up at her, she was smiling placidly.
There was no reason to suspect Tohko knew the reason behind my blush.
So it was probably just another of her ramblings.
Tohko went back to her meal. I continued scratching words onto the paper.
I didn’t know if the day would ever come that I could write another novel, or if the day would come that I wanted to.
But today I would write something sweet for Tohko, to be her dessert after she finished Takeda’s bitter report.
Afterword
Hello, Mizuki Nomura here. This new series is the story of Tohko the book girl and Konoha, the once-brilliant young author and the mystery girl.
I wanted to try something that went in a different direction from other series I’ve done in the past, and after much discussion with my editor I put pen to paper. We talked about making a serious story, and in the earliest premise Tohko was a much more distant and bloodthirsty character. But once I started writing, she ended up being the exact opposite and turned into a happy-go-lucky girl, so we branded it as a “bittersweet comedy” in the promotional material.
Wait… comedy? Well, look… you can’t say that there aren’t any comedic elements, and… um… it is serious. Just so you know!
Warmly despondent—that’s the kind of story I hope it will be.
Now, like Konoha, I had only read textbook excerpts of Osamu Dazai, the author that Tohko discusses at great length in the story. A friend of mine in high school whispered that “Reading this book makes you want to kill yourself.” That left a big impression on me and I thought, “Wow, this book must be cursed!” and I stayed far away from it. But during the writing of this book, I read a handful of Dazai’s works and my image of him changed completely. I’m a convert. I can recommend any of his short story collections, so those of you who haven’t read him should pick one up.
Illustrations for this series were provided by Ms. Miho Takeoka. Her dreamy use of color, so transparent and ethereal, truly took my breath away. Tohko is exactly as I had pictured her and I got emotional when I saw the sketches. Thank you so much for your amazing drawings, Ms. Takeoka!
Each time I begin a new series I worry whether I’ll make it to the end of the story. I’m going to do my very best, so I hope you’ll come along with me! Bye for now!
—Mizuki Nomura
April 4, 2006
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Contents
Welcome
Color Insert
Epigraph
Prologue–Memories for an Introduction: The Author, Girl Prodigy
Chapter 1–Tohko Has Refined Tas
tes
Chapter 2–The Most Delicious Story in the World
Chapter 3–The First Letter—Shuji Kataoka’s Confession
Chapter 4–One Bright Day in May, He…
Chapter 5–The Book Girl’s Deduction
Chapter 6–The Book Girl’s Allegation
Epilogue–A New Story
Afterword
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime
Story: MIZUKI NOMURA
Illustration: MIHO TAKEOKA
Translation by Karen McGillicuddy
Bungakushoujo to shinitagari no pierrot © 2006 Mizuki Nomura. All rights reserved. First published in Japan in 2006 by ENTERBRAIN, INC., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with ENTERBRAIN, INC. through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.
English translation © 2010 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Cover design by Kirk Benshoff. Copyright © 2010 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: December 2012
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ISBN 978-0-316-24593-7
Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime Page 15