Book Girl and the Scribe Who Faced God, Part 1

by Mizuki Nomura

  “Really? A lemon pie?”

  Maika hugged the book tightly and her eyes grew wondrous.

  “That’s right. Lemon is the flavor of youth… and the flavor of ‘first love.’ ”

  Maika was looking up at Tohko’s smiling face, her eyes round and wholly absorbed.

  Just then my mother appeared carrying a tray loaded with tea and sweets.

  “Oh, Maika! You shouldn’t be bothering your brother! I’m so sorry, Amano.”

  “Not at all. We should talk about books again sometime, Maika.”

  “Okay! You have to tell me more about dessert!”

  Maika pattered away again.

  My mother had served the tea with bite-sized fruit pies and Tohko’s cream puffs.

  “Your cream puffs are so lovely and light.”

  “Making sweets is my hobby, after all.”

  Tohko was going to ride this performance of hers to the end.

  “Well, you two enjoy, then.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  The door shut quietly. Tohko gazed in the direction my mother and Maika had gone with an open, gentle look.

  I found it a little odd and was just starting to wonder if anything was wrong when she murmured in a soft voice.

  “What a lovely family.”

  It caught me totally off guard to hear something like that out of nowhere. Then she murmured in an even gentler voice, sounding deeply emotional, “Your mother and your father are both so warm. And your little sister is such a cheerful little girl. Everyone seems to get along so well.”

  Tohko slowly shifted her gaze around the room. She gazed slowly—affectionately—at the bright window with afternoon sunlight spilling through it, at the moss-green curtains my mother had made, at the bookshelves with comics and books mixed together indiscriminately, at the desk I’d used since elementary school, as if she wanted to burn each and every one of the images into her memory.

  “You grew up in this house… surrounded by these kind people.”

  My heart squeezed tight.

  Why did she look like this?

  Why was she saying something like that?

  And why had she come to my house today?

  “… What’s your family like, Tohko?”

  I’d never asked her that before. Somehow I had the feeling that I shouldn’t ask why she was boarding at Ryuto’s house or where her parents were and what they were doing.

  A sharp anxiety slowly bloomed inside me. My heart was thrumming the whole time.

  Tohko looked at me and smiled gently.

  “When I was little, I would taste test books with my dad a lot. I would sit on his lap and together we would tear into a book—I went from the bottom and he went from the top—and we would talk about it… how it tasted like a fluffy rice omelet or a freshly baked doughnut or whatever. We would be eating the same book, but sometimes my dad and I would taste different things. When I was even smaller, my dad would feed me books and tell me, ‘Hamburger tastes like this’ or ‘Stew tastes like this.’ ”

  She looked and sounded happy. It showed how much Tohko loved her family.

  “So your dad eats books, too?”

  “Yeah. Although my mom could only eat regular food. She would always write my dad and me beautiful meals. My mom was a book girl like me, and when she was in school, she wanted to be an author.”

  Tohko gave a smile like a budding flower.

  The steam from the tea rose gently from the white teacups.

  “When my dad proposed to my mom, he said, ‘I want you to be my author. Just mine.’ ”

  A sweet yearning came into her clear, black eyes.

  “ ’Cos you’re Tohko’s author, Konoha.”

  The words Ryuto had said to me came suddenly back to mind, and my heart leaped so hard I thought for sure Tohko must be able to hear it beating.

  Were those really the words Tohko’s dad had used to propose?

  This was bad. I couldn’t get my heart to slow down!

  The heat rose all the way to my face.

  I hurriedly reached out for the cream puffs piled on top of a lace-patterned paper napkin.

  My mother’s praise hadn’t been exaggerated. The surface of the cream puff was golden brown and beautifully puffy and it was heavy with cream.

  “Considering you made these from scratch, they turned out great,” I joked as I bit into the cream puff.

  The supple custard from within the crispy shell spilled into my mouth. The next instant, a shock like lightning shot through me from the tip of my tongue to the top of my skull.

  “Urrrrrrgh!”

  What was this?

  It was so salty—no, there was a sharp sweetness, too! And it wasn’t the sweet bite of grilled, glazed rice dumplings; there was something more astringent or pungent, as if someone had dumped a ton of coarse salt on top of pudding. A trendy taste—wait, what was I saying? Nothing edible tastes like that!

  “What’s wrong, Konoha?”

  Tohko asked me uneasily since I was frozen, still holding the cream puff.

  At long last I was able to swallow what I had in my mouth. I drank the burning hot tea, and then finally I was able to get my voice out.

  “Tohko! You switched salt for the sugar in this custard!”

  “What?!”

  Tohko’s eyes popped.

  “I couldn’t have—I paid close attention—are you sure you’re not tricking me, Konoha?”

  “I’m definitely not. If you tasted it, you’d be able to tell in a heartbeat.”

  I spoke without thinking and quickly shut my mouth. Tohko looked hurt.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “It’s fine.”

  She shook her head awkwardly, then yelped, “Oh no!! I told your family to have some, too!”

  We burst out of my room and ran downstairs.

  When we opened the door to the living room, we saw my mother and father each holding the cream puffs they’d just bitten into and wearing conflicted looks on their faces, not saying anything. Maika was crying, “It’s too saaaaltyyyy.”

  “Don’t get so down.”

  “I’m sorry…”

  When Tohko got back to my room, she hugged her knees and dropped her head on them. She was so glum, it was as if a shade had been pulled over the window behind her.

  “My parents won’t care.”

  They had both told her, “It’s fine” and “People mistake salt for sugar all the time,” and laughed it off. Maika had cried the entire time, though…

  “Tohko?”

  Even when I called her name, she kept her head down. She seemed pretty depressed. She probably thought her image as a wise and put-together president had been shattered.

  Just then, she said in a cheerless voice, “I wanted you to have cream puffs that tasted good.”

  A stab went through my chest.

  Tohko didn’t know what the things we ate every day tasted like.

  She probably didn’t usually have any reason to use sugar or salt. And yet she had made cream puffs from a recipe so that she could give them to us.

  Even though she couldn’t taste them herself.

  I picked up the half-eaten cream puff I’d tossed aside and bit into it.

  “It’s pretty decent.”

  “Konoha…!”

  Tohko looked up and her eyes widened.

  The grotesquely sweet but oh-so-salty taste spread thickly over my tongue.

  I kept eating anyway, and when I’d swallowed the last bit of it, I reached for a second.

  “Stop. You don’t have to force yourself to eat them.”

  “… I’m not forcing myself.”

  I bit into the second one.

  “But—”

  Tohko looked like she was about to cry.

  “I’m just eating them because I want to.”

  “You’re going to give yourself a stomachache.”

  “My stomach’s not that delicate.”

  Even though my mouth was coated in salt, the cr
eam was also sweet and sharp and was turning into something amazing.

  I reached for the third cream puff.

  “That’s enough. You can stop.”

  “… You’ve always finished everything.”

  Tohko’s eyes widened.

  “You’ve always finished everything I’ve written, without leaving a bite of it uneaten.”

  Her face crumpled, her eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes filled with tears.

  I swallowed the third cream puff, and calming my stomach, which felt like it was about to convulse, I slowly brought the fourth and last cream puff to my mouth.

  If I didn’t do this fast, I was sure the contents of my stomach were going to come back up.

  They say that when you keep eating spicy food, your tongue goes numb and you can’t feel anything anymore, but maybe because I tasted some sweetness in the cream, the stabbing sensation of the salt continued the same as ever. A cold sweat gathered at my temples.

  I recalled Tohko weeping pathetically and eating the bizarre stories I wrote in the book club after school.

  “Ugggh. This tastes weird! Instead of condensed milk on top of this strawberry shave ice, it’s topped with mayonnaise.”

  At first I did it to be mean.

  Then because I enjoyed her reactions.

  Each and every day, I wrote a twisted story.

  And yet no matter how Tohko wailed, no matter how many tears fell from her eyes, she would never leave something I wrote uneaten.

  She would swallow the last bite and—“Thank you for making that. You’re coming to the club tomorrow, right?”—she would smile cheerfully.

  How had she been able to do that?

  How had she kept on eating stuff that didn’t even qualify as food every day?

  When I thought about that, it wasn’t just my stomach that grew full and hurt because of it; my heart did, too. Tohko watched me in silence as I fought to finish off the last cream puff.

  When I finally forced everything down, my stomach felt like it was going to rupture, my heart felt queasy, and my throat was strangely prickly.

  “Thank you for making these.”

  When I said that, Tohko gave a slight smile, her eyes still watery.

  “… Thanks.”

  Tohko poured me a second cup of tea from the teapot.

  I sipped timidly at the tea, which had cooled and felt nice on my tongue.

  My stomach was convulsing again. I could never, ever repeat that performance.

  Tohko picked up one of the bite-sized strawberry and orange tarts that my mother had made.

  “These are so cute.”

  She smiled and popped it into her mouth.

  A mysterious almost poignant, almost warm silence filled the room, and then Tohko murmured wistfully.

  “Do you remember how you were so dark and rebellious and mean when you were a first-year?”

  I almost spat my tea out.

  “What are you saying?! Is that what you thought of me?”

  Still smiling, Tohko said, “But you were mean. You would try to ditch club meetings, you acted cold when you talked to me, you would get sarcastic, you would write nothing but weird stories and mess with your president.”

  “That’s because you dragged me into the book club against my will. I never wanted to get involved in clubs and I never wanted to write stories.”

  At the end of a long, long winter. Spring had come very late that year.

  After my life as a shut-in, I started high school still dragging behind me what had happened with Miu, and every day went by in gloom.

  I didn’t want to interact with anyone. I didn’t want to get hurt again. I would be happy to have my days go by ordinary and peaceful. That had been my wish when Tohko appeared before me.

  An old-fashioned girl from the next year above mine with long black braids, reading a book below a snow-white magnolia tree in the schoolyard.

  When the apparently graceful young lady suddenly tore a page out of her book, I gawked at her.

  “I’m going to keep you nearby so you don’t spill my secret.”

  “I am Tohko Amano in class eight of the second-years. As you can see, I am a book girl.”

  She gave her name, like a violet announcing the spring, sunnily and prettily, then took hold of my hand and led me to the cramped clubroom in the western corner of the school’s third floor. I was frantic.

  Under those circumstances, there was no way I was going to open my heart to the older girl who defied all logic and ate paper. I’m sure the improv stories I jotted off, ignoring grammar and muddling the progression of the story, had a badly degraded flavor.

  “Awww, so you really did do it on purpose.”

  Tohko pouted and glared at me.

  Then her expression softened again.

  “But every once in a while you would write me delicious, heartwarming stories. Sourly sweet stories that made my heart clench tight and then stories that tasted just a little bitter… You’ve fed me a lot of stories, Konoha.”

  The air grew poignant once again.

  Tohko’s face—it struck me as somehow different from normal and that made me nervous.

  “Where are you going to get your snacks when you go to college? You’re not going to tell me to send you letters every day. Right?”

  Tohko smiled kindly.

  “I won’t tell you to do that.”

  My throat grew dry and my anxiety swelled even further.

  The mood permeating the room was light and gentle. And yet something dark and heavy was gathering inside my chest.

  As if Tohko would vanish any moment from right in front of me…

  Tohko was staring straight at me, her eyes clear, as if she were watching something important.

  I couldn’t look away, either.

  “I won’t be able to have snacks anymore. But when you write your novel, let me read it, okay?”

  A visceral pain shot through my heart, as if it had been grabbed all of a sudden by a clammy hand.

  Tohko looked at me kindly.

  She had said the same thing several times before.

  How she wanted me to write a novel.

  The pain continued to constrict my chest—enfolding it gently but firmly.

  I was unable to answer, just as I had always been. My voice was lodged in my throat.

  Tohko looked at me with a peaceful expression, like a much older person.

  When the sun had set and it was starting to get dark, Tohko left my house.

  “We’d love to have you again, Amano.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  She dipped her head politely to my family, and her cheeks flushing, she added in a murmur, “I’m sorry about the cream puffs.”

  My parents both said jovially, “Oh, it’s fine.”

  “Bye-bye, preznent.”

  Maika waved energetically and Tohko gave a little wave back, said, “Bye-bye, Maika,” and left the house.

  I went partway with her.

  “Let’s stop here.”

  Under the sickly glow of the streetlight, Tohko smiled, then held out the other paper bag she had brought to my house.

  “It’s the scarf and gloves I borrowed from you. And the mechanical pencil, too. I’m sorry it took me so long to return them.”

  I accepted the bag. Inside I could see a snowy-white scarf.

  “You still have exams. Don’t you still need the pencil?”

  It’s a charm to make miracles happen. I had offered it to Tohko, my cheeks burning, on a cold night when the north wind was blowing.

  A grown-up smile came over Tohko’s face again.

  “It was very helpful already. Thanks. I’ll work hard, so the rest is actual ability instead of a miracle.”

  She was talking as if we were never going to see each other again—

  As if she knew that and so was returning to me everything that she had borrowed.

  It was the same sensation I’d had in my room that afternoon.

  As if Tohko�
��s figure would dim and then disappear at any moment.

  It was like… this anxiety—as if my feet were slipping out from under me—crushed my chest. As Tohko started to leave, I grabbed her hand and pulled her back.

  “Wait—it’s still cold out!”

  Why was I so panicked? A human being would never just disappear right in front of somebody one day!

  When I pulled the scarf out of the bag, I smelled flowers, as if it had been freshly washed. Just as I’d done that night, I wrapped it around Tohko’s neck.

  “I’ll let you borrow it again. Wear it home.”

  Tohko’s eyes widened, then abruptly grew poignant. She seemed on the verge of crumbling. Then she smiled joyously.

  “Thank you. A scarf really does keep you warmer.”

  “I’m not giving it to you, though! You have to bring it back to me!”

  “Okaaay,” she responded jokingly, then headed off into the darkness. I watched her go, the paper bag still in my hand, feeling like I was going to cry.

  Tohko is Fumiharu’s daughter after all, Kana.

  On his days off, he sets her on his lap and they eat a book together. They look so happy.

  Fumiharu’s face is kind and enraptured as he tears the pages into little pieces and feeds them to her. She beams and stretches out her hands and turns her face up to his and pesters him mightily, “More, Daddy, more.”

  The sunbeam by the window in the living room is their favorite spot. They set a pillow down there, and as long as the golden light spills through the window in the evenings, they read a book, munch on the pages, and talk.

  Things like “I got it, Daddy! Mrs. Pepperpot tastes like soup with lots of milk in it!” or even “The Tales of Ise is like sushi rice with mustard flowers draped on top of it.”

  She says the prickly interaction between Anne and Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables is like sour-sweet lemon meringue pie. That it tastes like “youth,” like “first love.” Tohko tells Fumiharu those things with a clear, beautiful gaze while he ruffles her bangs with his fingers.