by Yoru Sumino
I asked, “What’s the plan today?”
She sprang to her feet and sauntered to her sky blue backpack, from which she retrieved a notebook. She had our train tickets home tucked into its pages.
“Our train leaves at two-thirty,” she said. “We’ll have plenty of time to get lunch and find some gifts. Where should we go for the rest of the morning?”
“I don’t know. I’ll leave that to you.”
We checked out in no hurry. The hotel staff bowed to us as we left.
She decided we would ride a bus to a well-known shopping mall. According to the guide book, the complex straddled a canal and featured everything from shopping to live theatre. Apparently, it had become a popular destination for foreign tourists. When we got there in person, the massive, bright red buildings were an impressive sight, and every bit the landmark.
We found ourselves in the central open air atrium, surrounded by grand, curving buildings, unsure of where to go. We wandered for a bit and happened upon a street performer dressed as a clown, who was performing in an open area beside the canal. We added ourselves to the audience.
The show, about twenty minutes long, was fun to watch, and afterward the clown made a comical display of asking for money. Like the high school kid I was, I put a hundred-yen coin in his hat. She happily put in a five-hundred-yen coin.
The girl said, “That was really fun. You should become a street performer, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to? I could never do a job that involves dealing with so many strangers like that. That was the most impressive part of the whole act.”
“That’s too bad,” she said. “Maybe I should, then. Oh wait, I forgot, I’m going to die soon.”
“Did you come up with this whole conversation just so you could say that? Look, you’ve got a year, right? Maybe you can’t get to his level in that time, but if you practice, I bet you could get pretty good.”
When she heard my advice, her face lit up with delight. It was the kind of smile that could make someone else happy, too.
“You’re right!” she said. “Maybe I’ll do just that.”
Excited by her idea, she found a magic store in the mall and bought several kits for practicing. She didn’t let me in the store with her. She explained she was going to perform the tricks for me one day, and picking them out with her would spoil it. Left behind, I stood in front of the store where a promo video featuring various magic tricks was playing. I watched the video alongside a group of grade school kids.
She came out with a shopping bag in hand and said, “And thus the legend was born—the magician who rose to sudden fame only to disappear as quickly as she came.”
“Sure, maybe. But only if you’re unbelievably talented.”
“The way I figure it,” she said, “one year to me is worth five to everyone else. It’ll work out. Just you see.”
I said, “I thought you said every day is worth the same value.”
She seemed serious, her expression filled with even more strength and life than usual. Having a goal—even a short-lived one—made people light up. I wondered how much more conspicuous her radiance was with me standing next to her for comparison.
Time passed quickly as the radiant girl and I walked around the shopping center. She bought some clothes; when she found something that interested her, maybe a cheerful T-shirt or a skirt, she held them out to me and asked what I thought. I didn’t know what was good or bad in women’s fashion, so I responded with a noncommittal, “It suits you.” Luckily, and mysteriously, that seemed to cheer her up. Since I wasn’t lying, I didn’t have to feel guilty.
At one point, we came across a store selling Ultraman goods. She bought me a vintage-style vinyl finger-puppet of a monster that looked like a dinosaur’s skeleton. I didn’t know why she’d chosen it for me, and when I asked, she said it suited me. I thought I’d get back at her by giving her an Ultraman one in return, but nothing I did could spoil her good mood.
With our hundred-yen plastic puppets on our fingers, we stopped to eat some ice cream before deciding to return to the train station.
We arrived exactly at noon. Seeing how we’d just had ice cream, we decided to hold off on lunch and instead shop for some local treats to bring home to her friend and her family. The train station had a large area filled with stalls dedicated to selling just such things. There was such a variety, she had trouble choosing.
She tasted several different samples before deciding on some candy and mentaiko—fish roe—for her family and another kind of candy for her friend. Since I was there, I bought myself a small box of pastries that had been awarded the Monde Selection gold medal several years running. I couldn’t take a present home to my parents, as I had told them I was staying at my friend’s house. I felt bad about it, but I didn’t see any other option.
We then ate ramen for lunch at a different restaurant from the day before. Afterward, we still had time to kill, so we got some tea at a café before boarding the bullet train. The trip’s end had me feeling fairly wistful, at least for me.
Unlike me, whose thoughts lingered on the past, she was already looking ahead.
“Let’s go on another trip together,” she said, gazing out the window beside her seat. “Maybe we’ll do winter next.”
I didn’t know how to answer right away, but I decided the least I could do at this point was be cooperative.
“That could be nice.”
“Look at you, all agreeable. Does that mean you had fun?”
“Yeah, this was fun.”
It had been, too. I really meant it. My parents were always busy with work and took a hands-off approach to parenting, and I didn’t have any friends to travel with. This rare excursion had been a lot more fun than I’d expected.
She looked at me with surprise, but then her usual smile quickly returned, and she seized me by the arm. I didn’t know what she was going to do, and I was frightened. Maybe she noticed my reaction, because she let me go, withdrawing her hand with an embarrassed, “Sorry.”
“What were you going to do?” I asked, “Try to take my pancreas by force?”
“No, I was just happy you were being honest with me for once. Anyway, I had so much fun. Thank you for coming with me. I wonder where we should go next. I think I might want to go north. I want to experience the cold.”
“Why would you torture yourself like that? I hate the cold. If our next trip is in the winter, I’d rather escape even farther south.”
“Our outlooks really don’t match up!”
While she puffed out her cheeks in mock displeasure, I opened the box containing my travel gift to myself. I shared one pastry with her and took a bite into another. The treat was round, buttery and cakelike, with a sweet bean filling.
When we arrived back in our hometown, the summer sky was beginning to take on a tinge of ultramarine. We changed over to a local train that took us to the station nearest our homes, and we rode our bikes together back to our school. Since we’d be seeing each other on Monday, our goodbyes were short before we went our separate ways.
When I got home, my parents were still out. I responsibly washed my hands and rinsed out my mouth before heading to my room. I rolled onto my bed and felt suddenly tired. I was trying to figure out if it was because of exhaustion or a lack of sleep, or both, when I fell asleep.
My mom woke me up at dinnertime, and we watched TV as we ate yakisoba noodles. People say a trip ends when you get home, but I learned that wasn’t true. My trip didn’t end until I was eating dinner at home as usual. Normalcy had returned.
I didn’t hear from her all weekend. Over those two days, I shut myself away in my bedroom to read as I always did. If I went out, it was alone, like to get an ice cream bar from the supermarket. Two days had passed without incident, when on Sunday night I realized something.
I was waiting to hear from her.
On Monday, when I got to school, everyone in class knew about our trip
.
I found my school slippers in a trash can. I didn’t know if that was related, but I could be sure I hadn’t dropped them there myself.
Five
A series of unusual events began that morning. I already mentioned my missing school slippers, but that was just the start.
I arrived at school the same as always, and when I went to retrieve my indoor slippers from the shoe rack, they were gone. I was wondering what could have happened to them when someone said, “Morning…”
The girl was the only person in my class who ever greeted me, but this didn’t sound like her usual high-energy voice. Wondering if her pancreas had gone kaput, I turned and was surprised to see it wasn’t her at all.
The best friend, standing at her shoe cubby, glared at me with open hostility.
A shiver ran down my spine, but even an antisocial person like me knew not responding would be rude. I returned her greeting with a noncommittal, “Morning.” The friend stared me in the eyes, then snorted and began exchanging her sneakers for school slippers. With my own pair missing, I didn’t know what to do. For now, I kept standing there.
Once her slippers were on, I thought the friend would just go, but she gave me another dirty look and snorted again before she left. I didn’t mind. That’s not to say I enjoyed it—I’m not a masochist or anything—but I saw uncertainty in her eyes. I suspected she was having trouble deciding how to act toward me.
Even if she chose to be hostile, I respected her for greeting me. If our positions were reversed, I would have hidden around the corner until she was gone.
I gave the shoe racks a quick search but couldn’t find my slippers. Hoping someone had taken them by mistake and would eventually return them, I decided to go to class in only my socks.
When I entered my classroom, I felt rude stares upon me from all sides, but I ignored them. When I decided to keep doing things with the girl, I had resigned myself to being scrutinized. She wasn’t here yet.
I sat at my desk in the back row and transferred over what I needed for class from my school bag. Since this was the day we got our tests back and reviewed our answers, all I needed was the question sheet. I also put my pencil and a paperback into my desk.
I was glancing over last week’s test questions and wondering what could have happened to my slippers when there was a commotion at the front of the classroom. I looked up to see the cause: The girl had strolled cheerfully into the classroom. A bunch of clamoring students rushed over to her, surrounding her in their circle. Absent among them was her best friend, who wore a conflicted expression as she watched from her desk. The friend glanced at me, and since I was looking at her, our eyes met before I quickly looked away.
I decided to stop paying any attention to the circle of students and their excited murmur. If the fuss had nothing to do with me, then I didn’t care. If it did, then I didn’t want to know.
I took the paperback from my desk and dove into the world within its pages. Chattering classmates were no match for a booklover’s powers of concentration.
At least that’s what I thought, until I discovered that when one of those classmates was directly talking to me, the depth of my love for reading mattered not; I was going to be dragged back to the real world.
Now two people had talked to me in one day, and it was still morning. Another surprise. I looked up and saw the boy who had shown me his (previously unseen) potential as a cleaning partner. He looked down at me with a grin that, if I was being critical, I’d say showed no sign of a thinking mind beneath.
“Hey, [Controversial Classmate],” he said, drawing out the “a” at the end of my name. “Why’d you throw away your slippers, huh?”
I blinked a few times then said, “What?”
“I saw ’em in the restroom trash can. They still looked good to me, so why’d you toss ’em? Did you step in dog poop or something?”
I said, “I think dog poop in the school would be the bigger concern. But all right, thanks. I’d been upset because I’d lost them.”
“Oh. Well you should be more careful. Do you want any gum?”
“No. Let me get my slippers. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh, hang on, did you go somewhere with Yamauchi? Everyone’s talking about you again. You two really are dating, aren’t you?”
Luckily, everyone who sat around me had gone to join the commotion, and they weren’t around to hear this blunt and artless question.
“No,” I said. “We just happened to meet at the train station. Someone must have seen us or something, I guess.”
“Hmmm, okay. Well, if anything juicy happens, you tell me first.”
Chomping on his gum, he went back to his seat. I could have dismissed him as naïve, but that seemed negative; he made the quality into a great virtue.
I got up from my desk and went to the nearest bathroom, where my slippers were indeed in the trash. Luckily, they were near the top, and nothing too unsanitary had been thrown away after to make them dirty, so I reclaimed them, dutifully slipped them on, and returned to class. When I entered the room, a brief silence fell before giving way to the chatter once more.
Class was uneventful. I got my tests back, and I’d done well enough. Toward the front rows, the girl and her friend were excitedly comparing their scores. The girl met my eyes once, and she proudly displayed the front sheet of her exams to me. I was too far back to make out the score, but I saw many more circles than strikes. The best friend noticed our exchange and looked uncomfortable, so I glanced away. That was the only contact the girl and I had that day.
We didn’t speak the next day, either. My only interactions with my classmates were the best friend glaring at me again and that one guy offering me gum. The only other incident—and this was just a personal matter—was that I lost a pencil case I’d bought at a hundred-yen store.
The first opportunity to talk to her in several days came on the last day before our six-week summer break—although our class got the news we were to show up for two weeks of summer school, which made the distinction rather meaningless. Still, as the last day of the term, this was only supposed to be a half-day, ending after the assembly and announcements, but the librarian asked me to stay after to do some work. She asked me to bring the girl, as well.
On this rainy Wednesday, I initiated conversation with her in class for what may have been the first time. She was on chalkboard cleaning duty, and I walked to the front of class to inform her of our library work. I knew several classmates had their eyes on us, but I decided to ignore their stares. I didn’t think she was bothered in the first place.
After class was dismissed, she had to stay behind to help close up our classroom. I went ahead to lunch in the cafeteria before continuing to the library. Few students were there, for this was the end of the term, after all.
Our job was to staff the counter while the librarian was at a teachers’ meeting. During the meeting, I sat at the checkout desk reading a book. Two classmates came up separately with books to borrow. One was a timid girl who asked, “Where’s Sakura?” without showing any particular interest in me. The second was our class representative. He’d always come off as gentle-natured in class, and his tone and expression reinforced that impression as he asked, “Where’s Yamauchi-san?” I responded to both the same, telling them she was probably still in our classroom.
She arrived not much later, bringing with her a smile that felt totally at odds with the gloomy weather.
“Yoo-hoo,” she said. “Were you lonely without me?”
“‘Yoo-hoo’ yourself. Oh, a couple of our classmates were looking for you.”
“Who?”
“I don’t really remember their names. It was a timid girl and the class representative.”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “I know who you mean. Okay.”
She flopped down onto a swiveling desk chair behind the counter, and the chair’s metal parts creaked in protest, echoing throughout the quiet library.
I said, “I think you�
�re hurting the poor thing.”
“Is that something you should say to a young lady?”
“I don’t think you’re a lady.”
She laughed mischievously. “Are you sure? You know, a boy told me he liked me yesterday.”
“What?” I said. Her statement was so unexpected, I accidentally let my surprise show.
She lifted the corners of her mouth high; so high that creases formed between her eyebrows. It was thoroughly infuriating.
“He told me to meet him after class yesterday.” She sighed melodramatically. “That’s when he confessed his innermost feelings to me.”
“If that’s true,” I said, “I’m not sure he’d appreciate you telling me. It sounds personal.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you who. My lips are sealed—like Miffy.”
She put her index fingers in the shape of an X in front of her lips.
“You mean Miffy the rabbit?” I said. “Are you one of those people who thinks the X is her mouth? Her face is divided in the middle—the top half is her nose, and the bottom half is her mouth.”
I sketched the little cartoon rabbit for her. She exclaimed, “No way!” in total disregard to the quiet library, her eyes and mouth opened wide. The sight was satisfying. At last, I got my revenge for her insulting non-reaction to my trivia on Japanese dialects.
“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “I’m shocked. I feel like these last seventeen years have all been a lie. But anyway, this boy said he liked me.”
“Oh, we’re going back to that? So, what did you tell him?”
“I said I wasn’t interested. Why do you think I did that?”
“Beats me,” I said.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she teased.
“Let me tell you something. If someone says, ‘Beats me,’ or ‘Huh,’ that means they’re not interested enough to ask why. Have you never noticed that before?”
She looked ready with a comeback, but a student came up to check out a book and spoiled her timing.