by Yoru Sumino
I was restless and uneasy. Later, I’d wish I could have frozen time and stayed that way.
“Later” came too quickly. I was sitting at the table and watching TV, picking disinterestedly at my dinner, as worry had replaced my appetite.
That’s when I learned why she hadn’t come.
She had lied.
I had lied, too.
She broke her word by not telling me when she would die.
I broke my word by not returning the book I’d borrowed and the money I owed her.
I would never be with her again.
The news was on.
My classmate, Yamauchi Sakura, had been discovered, collapsed in an alleyway in a residential area by a local resident.
After being found, she had been rushed by ambulance to a hospital, but despite the best efforts to resuscitate her, she passed away.
The newscaster reported these facts without any emotion.
My unused chopsticks slipped from my fingers and dropped to the floor.
When they found her, she had been stabbed by a common kitchen knife.
She had become another victim of the random killer from the neighboring prefecture.
The police quickly apprehended the murderer. He was nobody at all.
***
She was dead.
I had been naïve.
Even after everything, I had still been naïve.
I took it for granted that she had one year left.
She might have taken that for granted, too.
At the very least, I had failed to realize no one was guaranteed a tomorrow.
I assumed, as a matter of course, that a girl with little time left would at least have a tomorrow.
I assumed my death had not yet been assigned, and could come at any time, but if she had only been given a year to live, she was at least promised a tomorrow.
What kind of fool’s logic was that?
I believed the world would at least spare the life of a girl who had little life left.
Of course, life doesn’t work that way. It never has.
The world doesn’t discriminate.
The world doesn’t pull its punches from any of us; not people healthy like me, and not people with fatal diseases like her.
We had been wrong. We had been stupid.
But who could blame us?
Once a TV serial was announced to end, the show always aired until the finale.
Once a manga’s final chapter was advertised, the manga always ran until the end.
Once the last movie in a series had a preview, that movie always came to the theaters.
Everyone just assumed these things to be true. Life had taught us those expectations.
I had assumed them, too.
I believed stories never ended before the last page.
She probably would have laughed at me and told me I read too much.
I wouldn’t have minded her laughing at me.
I wanted—and had intended—to read this story to the end.
But her story was over; the final pages left blank.
Foreshadowing never to be paid off. Story threads left dangling. Plot twists never revealed.
I would never know how her story was to turn out.
What happened to her rope and the prank she’d planned?
What was her big magic trick?
What did she really think of me?
I would never find out.
At least, that’s what I thought.
That was the reality I’d resigned myself to accept after she died.
But later, I realized that wasn’t really true.
I hadn’t gone to visit her house after her funeral and after her cremation.
I stayed in my room every day reading my books.
It took me ten days to find a reason to visit her house, and the courage to do so.
At the tail end of summer vacation, I remember something.
There might be a way for me to read the last pages of her story.
The key is in the object that brought us together in the first place.
I need to read Living with Dying.
Eight
It’s raining, and the dreary weather is unlikely to inspire any summer homework procrastinators to change their ways, no matter how soon school will be starting again.
At least, that’s my first impression as I wake up on the eleventh morning of her absence. I suppose I wouldn’t really know—I’m the type who always finishes his summer homework straight away, and I’ve never been one to practice that last-minute scramble.
I go downstairs to wash my face. My father, about to leave for work, joins me at the sink and inspects his appearance in the mirror. We exchange a quick good morning, and he slaps me on the back. I don’t know what the gesture is meant to communicate, and trying to figure out seems like more of a hassle than it’s worth.
I greet my mother in the kitchen and sit at the dining table, where my usual breakfast is already waiting. I touch my hands together in a perfunctory prayer and eat my miso soup. My mom’s soup is always tasty, no matter what else is happening in the world.
I continue eating my breakfast, and my mom comes over to the table with her fragrant cup of coffee in hand. I glance at her. She’s looking at me.
She says, “You’re going out today, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. In the afternoon.”
“Take this.”
She casually hands me a white envelope. I take it and look inside. A single 10,000-yen note is inside. I look at my mother in surprise.
“Is this…?”
“Go and say your goodbyes, dear.”
She returns her attention to the television, laughing at some TV personality’s dumb joke. I finish my breakfast in silence and take the white envelope back to my room. My mom doesn’t say anything else.
I pass the rest of the morning in my room before changing into my school uniform to go out. I’ve heard it’s better if you go in school dress rather than street clothes. I guess the uniform helps the family know you’re not just some stranger.
I return to the downstairs washroom to straighten out my bedhead. My mom has already left for work.
Back in my room, I put everything I need in my school bag: the white envelope, my cell phone, The Little Prince. I don’t yet have the money to pay back what I borrowed from her—that will have to wait.
I step outside where the heavy rain is bouncing off the pavement, and in no time, several droplets perch on my pant legs. I go on foot, because I can’t ride my bicycle and hold an umbrella at the same time.
Few people are out on the street at noon on a stormy weekday. I walk to the school in silence.
Near the school, I stop in a neighborhood convenience store to buy an envelope appropriate for a funeral offering. The store has a small table where customers can sit and eat, and I use it to transfer the money from the plain white envelope my mother gave me.
A short walk from the school, I enter a residential area, where I’m struck by a fairly tasteless thought.
Oh, she got killed somewhere around here.
I’m alone on the street. Maybe that’s how it was that day, too, when she was stabbed. Not by somebody she’d angered, not by somebody seeking to spare her from her illness, but by somebody whose face or name she didn’t know.
Oddly, I don’t feel any sense of guilt over what happened. If I was to look for reasons to blame myself, I could find them—if I hadn’t made plans with her that day, she wouldn’t have died, for example—but I understand that won’t change anything.
Maybe you think that sort of logical thinking makes me heartless, or unfeeling. Who, me?
I’m sad.
I’m hurt, but the pain won’t break me. Of course losing her makes me sad, but there are people out there whose grief eclipses mine, like her family, whom I’m on my way to visit; her best friend; maybe even the class representative. When I think of them, I can’t help but shut out some of my own sadness.
Bes
ides, falling to pieces won’t bring her back. The only reasonable action is to keep myself together.
I continue walking through the rain, and I pass the place where I got punched.
As I approach her house, I’m not particularly nervous. My only worry, and it’s a minor one, is what I’ll do if no one is home.
Standing before her front door for the second time in my life, I push the button on the intercom without hesitation. Before long, a response comes; someone’s home. Good.
“Who is it?” says a woman’s muffled voice.
I give her my family name and say I’m Sakura-san’s classmate. The woman says, “Oh,” and there’s a pause. Then, “Just a moment,” and the intercom clicks off.
I wait in the rain until the door opens, revealing a slender woman. She must be the girl’s mother. Aside from the tiredness in her face, she looks like her daughter. I greet her, and with a stilted expression, she invites me inside. I fold up my umbrella and follow her in.
She shuts the front door, and I offer a proper bow.
“I’m sorry to come unannounced,” I say. “I wasn’t able to attend the wake or the funeral, but I was hoping I could at least offer some incense.”
She seems to accept what I say, even if it’s not entirely true. Her expression stiffens again, but she says, “It’s fine. You’re not interrupting anything—no one else is home right now. I’m sure Sakura will be happy to see you.”
I think, She’d have to be here to be happy, but I would never say it.
I remove my shoes and step in from the entryway. Her house feels bigger and colder than when I came here before, but maybe that’s just my imagination.
Her mother leads me into the living room; I didn’t come into this room last time.
She says, “You probably want to pay your respects to her first.”
I nod, and she guides me to a tatami-mat room next to the living room. When I see the memorial arrangement, I feel unsteady, inside and out, but I manage to keep walking, albeit with shaky, unnatural footsteps. I approach a wooden bookshelf on which various items have been placed.
Her mother kneels, retrieves a match from a bottom shelf, and lights a candle.
“Sakura,” she says softly to a picture of the girl on the center shelf. “A friend has come to see you.”
Her voice, hollow and thin, reaches nowhere but my ears.
She invites me to sit on a floor cushion and I do.
Like it or not, I’m faced with the girl’s picture.
She’s smiling. I can still hear her laugh.
I can’t do this.
Looking away from her picture, I ring a small high-pitched bell that has some religious name I forget, and I put my hands together.
I feel like I should know what I want to pray for, but I can’t think of anything.
I finish paying my respects to her and turn to her mother, who is sitting on the tatami mat next to me. I slide off my cushion and match her position. She gives me an exhausted but genuine smile.
I tell her, “I have something I borrowed from your daughter. Is it all right if I return it to you?”
“You have something of hers? Well, yes, you may. What is it?”
I reach into my bag to retrieve The Little Prince and hand it to her. She seems to recognize the book, and she holds it to her chest for a moment before placing the paperback next to the girl’s picture, as if in offering.
Bowing her head respectfully, she says, “Thank you, truly, for being her friend.”
I’m not sure how to respond. Eventually, I say, “Actually, Sakura-san was very good to me. She was always so cheerful and full of life. She brightened my mood whenever I was with her.”
She hesitates before saying, “Yes… She was full of life.”
Oh, that’s right. No one outside her family is supposed to know about her pancreas.
I consider keeping my knowledge a secret, but I realize I’m going to have to come clean either way if I want to accomplish what I’m here to do.
I don’t know how the truth will affect her family, and the part of me with a conscience considers stopping, but I quickly squash that sentiment and say, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Oh?”
Her face is kind and sad. I squash my conscience again.
“The truth is, I… I knew about her illness.”
“What?”
Her expression is as surprised as I’d expected.
“She told me about it. I never imagined that…this would happen.”
Still in stunned silence, she puts her hand over her mouth. It’s true, then: The girl hadn’t told her family she’d revealed her illness to anyone else. I suspected as much. When I visited her in the hospital, she allowed me to cross paths with her friend, but made sure I never ran into her family. That was one awkwardness she spared me.
I explain, “I happened to run into her at the hospital one day. That was when she told me. I don’t know why she did.”
Her mother stays quiet, letting me speak, and so I continue.
“She kept it a secret from all our other classmates. I know this must come as a great surprise, and I’m sorry for springing it on you.”
It’s time to get to the point.
“I came here for more than paying my respects. I have another favor to ask you. She kept a book—a sort of journal—after she got sick. I’m hoping you’ll let me read it.”
More silence.
“Living with Dying,” I say, and it’s like I flipped a switch.
Yamauchi Sakura’s mother, still holding her hand to her mouth, begins to cry. Quietly, quietly, holding back any sound, she cries, tears flowing from both eyes.
I don’t understand why that made her cry. I made her sad, I can see that much. But for reasons I don’t comprehend, finding out I knew about the illness has triggered an even deeper sorrow than was already burdening her. Without understanding why, I can’t find the right words to comfort her. Instead, I quietly wait.
She’s still crying when she stares into my eyes and begins to explain.
“It’s you,” she says.
What does that mean?
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you… I’m so happy you’ve come.”
I’m even more confused than before. Too unsure to speak, all I can do is watch her cry.
“Please, wait here,” she says.
She stands and vanishes into some other part of the house. Alone now, I search for the meaning behind her tears and what she said. Try as I might, nothing comes to mind.
She returns before I find an answer. In her hand is a familiar paperback-sized book.
She says, “This is it, right?”
Still in tears, she gently places the book on the tatami floor and turns it toward me. It is indeed the book, the girl’s constant companion. But for one exception, she had kept its contents secret from me the whole time.
“Yes, that’s it,” I say. “Living with Dying. She told me it was a journal she started when she found out she was sick. She never let me read it, but she told me she would make her writings public after she died. Did she ever say something like that to you?”
Her mother nods once, then again, and she keeps nodding. Each time, teardrops fall onto the tatami mats and her pale skirt.
I bow my head and plead, “Please. May I read it?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Thank you.”
“Sakura left it for you. Specifically you.”
My hand is reaching for the book when I reflexively freeze, caught by surprise. I look to her mother’s face.
“What?” I say.
Her crying intensifies, and she begins to speak between her sobs.
“Sakura told me. She said that when she…when she died, I was to give it to a certain person. She said he’d know about her sickness. He’d know the title of her book.”
Her tears keep falling and evaporating into the air. All I can do is continue listening. Beside me, the girl’s smiling phot
ograph watches us.
“She said that he…that he’d probably be too afraid to come to her funeral. But he would come for the book. Until then, we weren’t to show it to anyone outside our family. I still remember…exactly how she told me. It feels so long ago now.”
She covers her face with both hands now and breaks down completely. I’m still dumbfounded. This isn’t what the girl told me. She left the book…to me?
Memories of our time together flash through my mind.
Her mother’s voice squeaks out through her tears.
“Thank you. Thank you. Because of you, she… With you, she…”
Unable to restrain myself any longer, I pick the book up off the floor. Nobody stops me.
***
The first pages are a sort of monologue. She would have been in junior high.
November 29—
I don’t want to write about really depressing stuff, so I’ll get this part out of the way. When I found out I was sick, my mind went blank, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I got scared and cried. I got mad and took it out on my family. I did a lot of different things. First, I want to apologize to my family. I’m sorry. And thank you for staying with me until I settled back down. […]
December 4—
It’s been cold lately. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I found out about my illness. For one thing, I’ve decided not to resent my fate. That’s why I didn’t name this book about fighting against my illness, but rather, living with it. […]
After that, there’s an entry every few days describing various events in her life. This goes on for a few years, and each entry is fairly short. I don’t suspect anything in this part contains the answers I seek, and I decide to skim the entries for now. A few stand out to me, however.
October 12—
I got a new boyfriend. I’m not sure how I feel about it. If we stay together for a while, will I have to tell him about my illness? I don’t want to.
January 3—
We broke up. Not an auspicious start to the new year. Kyōko consoled me.
January 20—