Book Girl and the Captive Fool

by Mizuki Nomura

  The boy threw a string of punches into Akutagawa’s stomach and launched a kick at his chest. Though he staggered, Akutagawa held his ground and stayed on his feet. Sarashina tried to run forward, but he reached out a hand to stop her. He was punched again, but still he stood.

  Should I get a teacher? But I was frozen, my legs turned to jelly. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Akutagawa.

  Sarashina clung to Akutagawa’s back. He gently pushed her away, then slowly fell to his knees on the grass and bowed his head.

  In the dark flames of the evening sun, he pressed his head to the ground and groveled. He looked like Christ being crucified when he did that.

  A young man dressed in a black school uniform, rising out of the fading light. One who took suffering into his own body. A martyr.

  My palms were sweating, and the inside of my mouth was dry.

  My head throbbed with the knowledge that I had glimpsed something I shouldn’t have.

  The other boy’s face twisted with frustration. He gave Akutagawa’s shoulder a vicious kick, then yelled something at him and left.

  Sarashina crumpled to her knees, buried her face in Akutagawa’s back, and wept.

  The sun set, and Akutagawa kept his forehead pressed against the ground, not moving, until faint, cool shadows hid them both.

  We could only hold our breath and watch the scene play out like a painful fantasy.

  Chapter 3–I’ll Slice It to Pieces

  I received your letter.

  As soon as I started reading it, I felt as if my heart was being torn open, and I grew dizzy.

  You didn’t grasp my reasons for distancing myself from you at all. The paper was wholly devoted to you calling me a coward and a liar, to you ordering me to carry out your one-sided desires, to curses on the past, to threats against me, and nothing else.

  You’re going to slit your wrists, you’re going to jump out a window, you’re going to drink poison—I want you to realize that writing these things down without giving it a second thought is foolishness that only diminishes your value.

  I thought you had more pride than that.

  I tried to understand that behind your apparent strength, you were possessed of a glasslike fragility, and that fragility hurts and consumes you. And that you are a prisoner of the past and pray for vengeance. I’ve watched your pain and suffering, your despair, your battles, and your tears all this time.

  I wish with all my heart for your happiness. That’s why I want you to know that dishonorable, malicious acts will tear your heart to shreds. Since your happiness will be my atonement, I mean to help you and will do so eagerly, as long as your desires are the right ones.

  But I am not your slave.

  I will not blanch at your threats and come running.

  You are too dismissive of the man I am. You think I have no anger, no pain, no laments.

  If I was to reveal what I desire most at this moment, you wouldn’t be able to stop trembling. Of course, I’ll refrain from writing it here.

  My endurance is reaching its limit. I can’t stand it any longer. I feel myself going crazy. Although I brought this on myself, matters beyond my control keep cropping up, and I keep passing sleepless nights.

  Ever since the incident, I’ve believed I needed to be an honorable person. But now I’ve started to wonder who or what I have to be honorable for.

  My father?

  My mother?

  My friends?

  The past?

  The future?

  You?

  When I saw Akutagawa the next morning in class, he looked tired. I didn’t immediately call out to him, but he looked up and smiled.

  “Morning, Inoue.”

  His face was tranquil. My heart clenched as I awkwardly returned his greeting. “Morning, Akutagawa.”

  The day before, Takeda had said coolly, “We should leave it alone. I’m going to pretend like I didn’t see anything.”

  That was probably the way to do it. You shouldn’t stick your nose into other people’s business, especially if you’re not even friends. I should just treat him like I always did.

  But each time I looked at Akutagawa’s face, I was forced to remember what happened the day before. Even if we talked about it, I wouldn’t be comfortable.

  On the other hand, Kotobuki looked like she was still angry, and as soon as she saw me, she turned abruptly away and went over to Mori and the rest of her friends. That, too, was a vise on my heart.

  Fifth period today was homeroom, and we made preparations for the comic book café we were doing for the culture fair. Everyone was making signs to hang out front or billboards of anime drawings to display inside or shelves to put the books in.

  I was in the group making shelves and was cutting up cardboard with a box cutter.

  Akutagawa painted billboards.

  Several girls approached him, apparently to ask him to help with something. Akutagawa nodded and left his billboard, then went over to the standing signboard and pulled out a bent nail on the back support of the board before hammering in a new one.

  “Thanks, Akutagawa.”

  The girls thanked him exuberantly. Akutagawa said something to them with a placid expression and went back to his billboard. The girls looked over at him and chattered enthusiastically.

  “Man, Akutagawa’s as popular as ever,” I heard a boy working behind me say.

  “But he doesn’t want a girlfriend,” said another.

  “Wasn’t there a rumor that he was dating a girl in his class in first year? You know, that pretty one. Sarashina.”

  The instant they mentioned Sarashina’s name, my focus slipped and I lost my grip. It was right as I pulled the blade down on a piece of cardboard I was holding, and with the force behind the blade, I cut open the back of my left hand.

  “Ow!”

  “Ack, what’re you doing, Inoue?!”

  “Your hand’s covered in blood!”

  My classmates flocked around me in surprise. The blood flowing from the back of my hand fell onto the cardboard, staining it, and a girl screamed.

  I was just about to tell them I was fine when someone pressed a gray handkerchief over the back of my hand. Then he took hold of my arm and pulled me up.

  It was Akutagawa.

  “I’ll take him to the nurse,” he told the class monitor, then whispered, “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Y-yeah.”

  “Press down on it firmly.”

  He took my right hand and made me cover my left hand with it; then he put an arm around me and walked me out.

  When we left the room, I saw Kotobuki standing perfectly still, her face ashen.

  The nurse seemed to be out—there was no one in the office.

  Akutagawa had me sit on a bed. He sat down in a chair, then cleaned my wound with a cotton pad soaked with disinfectant.

  “Sorry… I can’t believe I cut myself with a box cutter in high school.”

  After disinfecting the wound, he put some gauze on my hand and wrapped it in medical tape. While he was securing it, he murmured, “Was there something on your mind?”

  I couldn’t tell him that I’d been thinking about him, so I said nothing. Akutagawa kept his face down and asked in a low voice, “You have something you want to ask me?”

  I felt as if he had clamped his hand down on my heart.

  His big, warm, strong hand kept a firm grasp on my left hand.

  “You’ve looked like there was something you wanted to ask me all morning.”

  Had it been that obvious? My ears burned like the third-rate actor that I was.

  I took a halting breath and tasted the bitter, medicinal air of the nurse’s office. I opened my stubbornly unmoving mouth, and in a quiet voice I said, “Yesterday, I saw you getting beat up by a student I didn’t recognize. And Sarashina was with you.”

  Akutagawa’s hands paused as he laid the tape on my hand. A pained breath escaped his dry lips.

  “Oh… you saw that.”

  “I�
�m sorry. I was going to pretend I hadn’t seen anything. And actually, I knew about Sarashina before, too. She’s… your girlfriend, right?”

  I saw Akutagawa’s face darken. He hung his head and a shadow passed over his eyes as the wrinkles between his eyebrows deepened, and I felt a chill.

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “You said that before, too. But then why would she talk to me as if you two were still going out? Who was that beating you up yesterday? Why was he the only one throwing punches? You even had to grovel to him.”

  Once I’d opened my mouth, I couldn’t stop. Akutagawa murmured in a rasping voice that seemed to stick in his throat, “It’s… all my fault. It makes sense that he’d beat me up for what I did. I’m a contemptible person… to Sarashina… and to Igarashi… Of course they’d hate me.”

  I couldn’t stand to see Akutagawa blame himself like this. It was too painful.

  As I struggled over whether I should stick my nose in or stay out of it, I couldn’t completely stop the awkward words that followed.

  “Truly contemptible people don’t call themselves that. Maybe you just try too hard. You’re upstanding and serious and honorable and considerate, but it must wear you out to be like that all the time. Can’t you just let go and relax every once in a while?”

  Akutagawa lifted his eyes, and I started.

  He glared at me, sparks flashing deep in his eyes. The usual serenity on his face was gone; it was now tense and colored with a violent rage.

  “I’m not the upstanding guy you think I am!”

  His voice was like a howl echoing through the room. He gripped my freshly bandaged hand with such strength I was sure it would shatter. A sharp pain stabbed through my brain. I almost screamed.

  Akutagawa shouted, “You think I’m serious and honorable and considerate?! You’re wrong! I’m none of those things! You don’t know anything!”

  Grinding my hand with his merciless strength, he brought his face close to mine. His gaze with its naked displeasure; his pained, explosive breathing; his trembling blue lips all told of his murderous rage and insanity. My entire body prickled with cold goose bumps, and terror bolted down my spine.

  “For a long time, I’ve messed up other people’s lives. Like Omiya, I put on a front and act honorable, but I’m still an awful, contemptible person, and I betray the people who trust me!”

  I was afraid; my hand hurt so much. I couldn’t budge, a hostage to his raging emotions. The things he said cascaded into my heart like a black torrent.

  “I can’t ever let down my guard—I have to keep strict control over myself forever. But I can’t fight back the impulses. I bet you have no idea what I’m thinking right now. Do you, Inoue? How I feel? What I wish I could actually do? The terrible things I think about? You don’t know! What a tainted person I am… Inoue, you—you couldn’t even begin to understand it!”

  Gritting his teeth fiercely, he glared at me, violence glinting in his eyes.

  Who was this person?

  He wasn’t the Akutagawa I knew.

  All of a sudden, Akutagawa released his grip on my hand and his face grew pained and morose.

  “… I’m going to hurt you, Inoue,” he said in a rough voice, then stood up. “You should forget this ever happened. Don’t get close to me.

  “Sorry,” he murmured painfully, then left the nurse’s office.

  Left by myself, I hugged my arms around myself and shuddered as a frigid feeling climbed up my legs.

  Only the wound on my left hand—which he had gripped so hard—burned like fire. A red stain spread slowly through the gauze.

  “You don’t know… Inoue… You couldn’t even begin to understand it.”

  The words he had hurled at me stabbed my heart. As my throat tightened and a searing pain burned my skin, the memories sealed in the depths of my mind returned to vivid life.

  Her lighthearted voice calling me, Konoha—Konoha. Her sweet eyes peeking up at me teasingly. Her bobbing ponytail.

  “Konoha, I don’t think you would ever understand.”

  Miu murmured, turning around in front of the railing on the roof and smiling sadly; then she tumbled backward.

  I remembered the scene vividly. Miu’s face overshadowed Akutagawa’s, and I sat staring into space.

  The stabbing chill wouldn’t stop, and the core of my mind ached with implacable terror.

  No—

  Leave him alone.

  If you get any closer to Akutagawa—

  Several times a day, a beastlike anger wells up from the depths of my heart.

  When I ask myself if I would ever hurt someone just because I felt like it, my vision clouds over and I break into a cold sweat.

  How can I quiet this infernal impulse?

  Don’t come after me. I have no idea what I might do.

  The sensation I felt when I cut up the library books comes again and again to my mind.

  The desk so far off, no one speaking, hearing only the sound of my own breathing and the pages turning in the tense silence. The loneliness and the terror that maybe I was the only person alive in this corner of the world. The self-loathing I felt about what I was planning to do.

  In the midst of all that, I took the box cutter out of my bag, pressed it down on the center fold of the page, and drew it smoothly down. When it was completely free of the book, my spirit felt strangely liberated and unburdened.

  My head aches, and I yearn for that feeling of floating in the air.

  I want to cut something up.

  A book—no, something softer, warmer, purer…

  Maybe then I’ll be free of this suffering that seems to burn my heart.

  Maybe then I wouldn’t hear that voice blaming me every night.

  I can’t go see you like this. Please understand. I’m standing on the very precipice.

  Before sixth period started, I went back to my class. I offered my concerned classmates noncommittal answers and sat down.

  Akutagawa flipped through a notebook at his own desk. I looked over at him, jumped, then hurriedly looked away and began arranging my books on my desk. It was stifling even to be in the same room with him.

  While I was mopping the floor in the hallway during cleanup, Kotobuki came over and reached out her hand at me with a frown. “Let me have that.”

  “Wha—?”

  “You’re barely pushing at all. What’s the point?”

  She grabbed the mop from me while I stood still, perplexed, and she began efficiently scrubbing the floor.

  “You must really be stupid to cut your hand with a box cutter. What an idiot.”

  “Uh… well, thanks.”

  “I just want to be done with cleanup.”

  Kotobuki pursed her lips as she spoke, then turned her back on me.

  “Inoue, did you have a fight with Akutagawa?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Akutagawa came back alone, and I don’t think you guys talked at all afterward.”

  “… You’re just imagining things,” I murmured feebly, which made Kotobuki turn back around and glare at me angrily.

  “Well, it’s none of my business.”

  Now that she mentioned it, Akutagawa didn’t seem to be in the classroom. Had he gone somewhere? No—better not to inquire. I couldn’t get involved with Akutagawa anymore.

  “You’re gonna make it to rehearsals today, right?”

  “S-sure,” I answered, stumbling over my words. In the nurse’s office, Akutagawa had asked me to forget about what I’d seen, but would I be able to act like everything was normal? I was so terrified of facing him that I trembled.

  I went back into the classroom with Kotobuki once she finished mopping.

  Kotobuki glanced at the bag hanging on the side of her desk, and her eyes widened.

  “That’s weird.”

  She was scrutinizing a string looped on her bag.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My rabbit is missing.”

  “What?”r />
  “The one I bought when we all went to that store with Tohko. Oh no. Did I lose it somewhere?”

  Her gaze fell to the floor; shock and tears were in her eyes.

  “Want me to help you look for it?”

  “That’s okay. You go on ahead.”

  “But—”

  “It’s fine.”

  She said it so forcefully that all I could do was leave the room without her.

  Feeling as if I was hugging a heavy rock to my chest, I started walking toward the music hall. My eyes turned toward the back of the school building, as if drawn there, and there I saw Akutagawa, his back turned. I felt like I’d been hit by lightning.

  Standing straight and tall, Akutagawa turned to face me.

  He held something fluffy and white in his right hand.

  It was a rabbit.

  Not a doll but what looked like the real thing.

  Red blood dripped from the soft white fur that covered its throat. Akutagawa’s hand was also stained red where he held the rabbit by its ears.

  Overcome by a violent nausea, I bolted.

  Why did he have that rabbit? What had he done? These questions tumbled through my mind, and at the same time a terror chilled my entire body and crept into my heart. All I could think was that I had to get away from him immediately.

  Akutagawa was terrifying.

  Terrifying!

  I didn’t go to the music hall. I ran through the school gates and went straight home.

  I went into my room and closed the door, sat down, and rested my elbows on my desk; then cradled my head.

  The throbbing of my heart was out of control. The steely glare Akutagawa had given me in the nurse’s office alternated with the gaze hardened by loathing that Miu had once turned on me, and I screamed out, “Stop!”

  Why?! We had had a comfortable relationship where all we did was talk pleasantly and compare our answers to homework.

  Why did you show me the violence of your emotions? Why did you turn your hatred on me?

  Miu—Miu had done the same.

  Like Nojima who was so in love with Sugiko, I had been smitten with Miu. I’d believed that Miu liked me, too. We were the best of friends and passed our every day in laughter. But then that day in our third year of middle school, Miu had fallen off the roof of the school right in front of me.