Book Girl and the Captive Fool (17 page)

“I cannot steal the woman my best friend loves.”

“I will never be Mister Nojima’s wife. I would rather die.”

Many letters.

Many words.

Painful words.

Bitter words.

Heartrending words.

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

I shouldn’t have fallen in love with you.

I shouldn’t have ever met you.

Then I never would have had to experience the pain, the fear, the sadness of being cast down alone into this darkness.

I didn’t want to be close to anyone ever again.

I didn’t want to feel this way.

My little sister Maika came to tell me dinner was ready.

“Are you sick, Konoha?”

My tiny sister looked at me tearfully. “Tell Mom I already ate,” I answered, then pulled the covers over my head and huddled in my bed.

I knew I was making my family worry again.

I was disgusted by my childishness and I hated it, but I couldn’t help that it felt like my head was going to split open and I could barely breathe.

I must have been lying there for almost four hours.

When I finally got my breathing under control, my room was dark and it was raining outside.

I listened to the cold sound of the rain.

I rolled my head to look over at the window and saw that the part slick with rain was glistening faintly.

I dragged myself out of bed and walked over to the window to close the curtain. I glanced outside, where the light spilling from the porch light and windows of the houses next door faintly illuminated the road and buildings.

A single red flower stood out in bloom in the midst of the light.

Someone was standing at a bend in the road, looking up at my house.

A girl who was holding a red umbrella and wearing the uniform of my school.

“… Kotobuki?”

Startled, I left my room. Treading quietly down the stairs so my family wouldn’t hear me, I opened the front door and went outside.

When she saw me, Kotobuki’s shoulders jumped; then she gripped the handle of her umbrella tightly in both hands and looked down timidly.

“… I’m sorry.”

Her faint, broken voice was almost lost in the sound of the falling rain.

“It’s… my fault you got angry and left, right? ’Cos I mentioned that girl… I’m sorry. I don’t know what I should do…”

“… It’s not your fault, Kotobuki.”

My voice was hoarse. I was exhausted and had no strength left in my body, so I had no energy to spare for kind words.

“But—”

Kotobuki shrunk in on herself.

“Really, it… has nothing to do with you. So could you just leave?”

Kotobuki looked up at me, her eyes terribly sad. She looked wounded, which made my heart ache.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered faintly, then hurried off. I saw that the shoulders and back of her uniform were darker where the cloth had been thoroughly soaked, and I realized she must have been standing in the rain for a very long time.

My chest tightened, and I was having trouble breathing
again—but I refused to think about it anymore and went back to my house.

I softly opened the front door, and as I was going upstairs, my mother came out of the living room.

“How do you feel, Konoha?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“I still have your dinner ready. And the bath is warmed up.”

I was about to tell her I wasn’t hungry when I remembered Kotobuki’s sad eyes. My heart constricting, I pressed my lips together and said, “Thanks. I’ll eat after my bath.”

My late dinner seemed to stick in my throat, and I could barely taste it. But nevertheless, I ate every scrap of it and washed the dishes in the kitchen before going back to my room.

Even after I turned the lights out and lay in bed, I listened to the sound of the cold rain, totally unable to fall asleep.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone or to be hurt anymore, but it kept happening… and the wounds I caused would be revisited on me.

Maybe it wasn’t possible for people to live without hurting others. Maybe as a species, we’re just that stupid.

I’d said awful things to Kotobuki.

And how was I going to face Akutagawa and Takeda and Tohko?

What was going to happen to the play at the fair?

Speaking of which… Tohko hadn’t called me. With that thought, my consciousness slipped away into a muddy darkness.

Sarashina was released from the hospital.

Mother—I couldn’t go to see her even once.

I couldn’t decide if it was right to go see her or right not to go
see her or if I should apologize or if I should ignore what happened.

I hurt her. Not just physically, but emotionally—I’ve hurt her so many times since that day six years ago. But I meant to be an honorable person.

Mother—I don’t even know what the word
honor
means anymore. What is it? What does it take to be honorable? Doesn’t being honorable on the one hand mean being dishonorable on the other?

I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right or what I ought to do. Or who I ought to choose.

I received another letter from her today. I still can’t make myself read it.

Why did I think that someone like me might be able to help her? Why did I think something so arrogant even briefly?

Mother, I am a fool.

P.S.

The play looks like it’s on hold. I’m sure that I’ve hurt Inoue, too.

When I woke up, my head felt leaden.

I glanced over at the clock beside my bed.

I should get up soon…

But I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want to be in the play.

I wanted to snivel and shut myself away like I had in middle school. But when I thought about how sad my family would be, I crawled out of bed in resignation.

“Good morning, Konoha. Do you want some breakfast?”

“… Okay.”

I ate the bacon and eggs, the toast smeared with apple jelly, the corn soup, and the vegetable juice without really tasting any of it, just like dinner the night before.

“See you tonight.”

I slung my bag over my shoulder and went out the door.

Maybe I would go somewhere else now. To the movies or an Internet café…

I set out onto the road, thinking it over, when—

“Good morning, Konoha.”

The rain had stopped, the air was cool, and bright light shone down from a clear sky.

The faint scent of rain still lingered on the street, where Tohko stood holding a poetry collection by Robert Browning. She looked at me, then smiled brilliantly.

“I came to get you. Let’s walk together.”

It was the same look she’d had when, just after I started high school and she forced me to join the book club, she would come to my classroom every day to get me, so I didn’t skip out and go home.

A kind, radiant look.

“All right, Konoha, it’s time for a club meeting.”

Tohko closed the poetry collection, then moved to stand in front of me with a little bounce. Her long braids like cats’ tails bounded in the air together.

Tohko cocked her head like she always did, as if nothing was the matter, and looked up at me brightly, which made my throat burn and my chest swell.

“… You’re such a busybody,” I said, choking back the feelings rising up in me, my voice trembling. “You always, always have to stick your nose in. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to be in the play. Akutagawa will be better off, too.”

I was like a child throwing a tantrum, and Tohko was like a mother as she asked, her face kind, “Is the reason you don’t want to be in the play because it’s so hard to watch Akutagawa suffering? Or is it because you’re in pain yourself?”

“Both.”

Tohko’s face drooped a little.

“Oh… but if you do that, you and Akutagawa will just keep on suffering.”

“I’m fine with that. It’s better than going out of your way for something, then failing and suffering even more.”

Tohko drooped even more.

Her sad, concerned face always worked on me.

“After you went home yesterday, Akutagawa didn’t say anything, but he looked agonized. Don’t you think Akutagawa needs our help right now?”

“I can’t. I can barely look after myself.”

I trembled, bowing my head. Tohko’s glum but clear voice was like fresh water when she spoke.

“You know… when you started second year and I saw you talking to Akutagawa in your classroom, I was so happy for you. I thought, ‘Oh good, Konoha’s made a friend.’ Ever since your first year, you’d never tried to make friends with anyone, and it seemed like you always kept a distance between you and other people when you talked to them.

“I always thought it would be nice if you made friends.

“I mean, I’m going to be gone next year after I graduate. Then you’re going to be the only one in the book club.”

Was she saying that the reason she’d been so fired up to secure members was not to preserve the book club, but because she was worried about leaving me on my own?

And the reason she’d been so elated about Akutagawa being in the play and the reason she never stepped aside in the club was because she didn’t want to leave me on my own…?

I was afraid the kindness in Tohko’s voice might make me cry, and I quickly blinked the tears away.

“You are such an unbelievable nuisance. You always jerk me around and say the most selfish things… I’ve never wanted any friends, and I never felt like getting to know anybody. Relationships that go on forever only exist in naive stories, and if you do believe in them, then when you get betrayed, all you get is pain.

“If a relationship is just going to fall apart some day, it’s better not to get involved at all.

“And then there’s Akutagawa… I wanted to stay in the comfortable relationship we had before. But you had to butt in and force him to be in the play and investigate everything he’s ever done—you forced me to find out all this stuff about him that I didn’t want to know!”

And now I was just as bad as Ms. Momoki when she shifted the blame onto Akutagawa. If I said anything more, I would hurt Tohko. I was tired of these uncontrollable, childish emotions. I was tired of all of it.

“I didn’t want to know any of it… I didn’t want to be close to anyone… I wish I’d never met any of them…”

I wish I’d never met Miu or Akutagawa, either.

Tohko’s face fell, and she looked at me sadly.

Don’t say another word, Konoha.

I pressed my lips together and hung my head.

“So you think you would have been better off if you’d never met me?”

When I lifted my face, Tohko’s clear, black eyes were fixed straight, unavoidably, on me.

“… Grah.”

My heart was pierced, my eyelids burned, and my throat convulsed.

“… That’s not fair.”

Yeah. It wasn’t fair.

It was a totally unfair, cowardly question.

The many smiles, the kindnesses, the advice Tohko had given me up till now flashed through my mind one after another, and something hot welled up deep in my chest.

At the end of a long winter—under a snow white magnolia tree on the school grounds—I met Tohko.

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

“All right, Konoha, today’s prompts are ‘watermelon,’ ‘the bullet train,’ and ‘a gas tank.’ You have precisely fifty minutes. Write an extra-sweet story! And… GO!”

“Waaah, this story is
way
too spicy, Konoha!”

“I am
not
a goblin! I’m just a book girl!”

She was an audacious, happy-go-lucky, and unorthodox club president who munched on paper; she jerked people around mercilessly; she had me hard at work writing her snacks; she forced me to write improv stories every single solitary day, even though I never wanted to write another novel ever again; and she said they were bitter or sour or whatever, then gobbled them all down without leaving a scrap behind—

She acted selfishly, but sometimes she would seem concerned. She would say warm, kind things to me.

Tohko was the only one that I couldn’t lie to, just as Akutagawa found it impossible to lie to his mother.

After all, Tohko had seen me be weak and pathetic this whole time.

She knew all about my cowardice and my stupidity.

And so she was the only person I couldn’t lie to.

And then to ask me if I wished I had never met her—it wasn’t fair asking me that.

She already knew the answer.

No fair! No fair at all!

How totally unfair of you, Tohko!

“Gah… that’s not a fair question. It’s not fair to ask me that when you already know…”

The tears I’d been holding back welled up in my eyes, but I kept arguing “it’s not fair” through my sobs. Tohko walked up to me and reached out her white hands to cup my cheeks. It was a cool, gentle sensation.

My nerves relaxed, but I kept my face down as more tears spilled from my eyes. Tohko whispered a line from the play in her clear, kind voice.

“I believe in you. You will be victorious. Your goodness and sincerity will help you grow to great things. I will be with you when you feel all alone. Walk the path you believe in with commitment. Your path will be long, and fools will disparage you. But you have a destiny that only you can fulfill.”

My voice thick with emotion, I answered, “That’s… not something Sugiko actually said. It’s just one of Nojima’s fantasies.”

“That’s true. But I’m not a fantasy.”

The hands that had cupped my cheeks moved to hold my hands. Then she pressed my hands over her heart.

“I’m really here.”

Her intelligent eyes looked straight into mine.

Below the jacket and shirt of her uniform, I felt Tohko’s heartbeat. It carried all the way into my palm.

Tohko’s chest was bony and hard, but it was warm, and beneath her skin, I could feel the proof that Tohko was alive and that she existed.

Thump
…
thump
… it went.

I couldn’t stop crying.

My throat and my chest felt like they were ripping apart, and my hot tears gushed out of me like water from a broken faucet.

As I listened to the sound of Tohko’s heartbeat with my hand, I realized something.

I had decided that after Miu, I would never get attached to anyone ever again. But I realized that all this time, I had been growing deeply attached to Tohko.

That after crying pitifully like this in front of her and spewing my feelings at her, each time I had felt the warmth of Tohko’s hands, and I had gotten back up.

I couldn’t possibly wish that I’d never met Tohko.

“Now, now, stop crying. You can use my handkerchief.”

Gently slipping her hand out from our overlapped grip, Tohko pulled out a light blue handkerchief. I accepted it, and pressing it against my face, I said, “This is the handkerchief I lent you.”

“What?!”

“That was more than three months ago.”

“O-oh? Was it really?” Tohko mumbled. Then she went on in embarrassment, “After you wipe your face, shall we go to school?”

“Yeah.”

After I’d splashed some water on my face at the sink at school, I headed to my class.

In the space of a day, the classroom had been transformed into a manga café. The desks were pushed together to make tables, which we set around the room with chairs; the manga everyone had brought from home were lined up on shelves; and billboards with anime characters on them had been hung up.

“Is Akutagawa here yet?” I asked. A classmate told me, “He’s doing some morning practice at the archery hall.”

I went to the practice hall and found Akutagawa all alone in his archery uniform and facing a target.

He drew back on the bow in his hand; straightened his spine; stared at the target with a tense, firm expression; and then released the arrow.

The arrow skirted the target and lodged into the matting propped up behind it. When he saw that, his brow furrowed in pain.

“Akutagawa?”

I called out to him, and his eyes widened in surprise.

“Inoue—”

“Sorry about yesterday. Something’s been getting to me, too, lately, and I just boiled over. I was trying to run away. But I stopped running. So I was wondering if you would be in the play with me. We could confront the things we’re afraid of there.”

Akutagawa’s eyes grew even wider, and he looked down at me.

I lifted my face up to look back at him.

Without fear, smiling, dignified.

The surprise in Akutagawa’s eyes gradually shifted into an optimistic determination.

“All right.”

He nodded, then smiled just a little.

In that moment, I felt as if a refreshing feeling of empathy had flowed into my lungs along with the pure morning air.

When I returned to the classroom with Akutagawa, who had now changed back into his uniform, it was oddly abuzz.

Had there been some kind of crisis?

Just then, Kotobuki’s friend Mori ran up to me.

“It’s terrible, Inoue! Nanase collapsed, and they took her to the nurse’s office! They said it was a cold. She was burning up!”

“She what?!”

Akutagawa and I both ran down to the nurse’s office and found Kotobuki lying on a bed breathing raggedly, her face bright red.

“I… I’m sorry, Inoue. I—”

She looked at me, tears in her eyes.

“I’ll still be in the play,” she croaked. Something about her admirable display of intensity lodged in my heart.

“You can’t. You should call your family and go home.”

“But then I’ll be causing everyone so much trouble.”

“You couldn’t help it, Kotobuki. It’s my fault you got sick.”

The reason she had become sick was because she’d stood out in the rain for such a long time. I couldn’t let her feel like she was responsible.

“It’s okay. We’ll take care of the play.”

I said this with a smile empty of all falsehood, and Kotobuki’s eyes teared up again.

“O-okay…”

“Whaaaat? Nanase collapsed with a fever?!” Tohko shouted, her eyes bugging out. She was dressed as a maid, acting as waitress in her class’s curry restaurant.

“Would you play Sugiko for her, Tohko? I bet you have all the lines memorized anyway,” I said.

“What about Nojima?”

“I’ll do it,” I answered crisply. Tohko’s eyes widened slightly; then she quickly smiled and nodded.

“All right.”

Akutagawa then asked, “If you play Nojima, then who’ll play Hayakawa?”

“Hayakawa hardly has any lines, so we can cut him out with some ad-libbing.”

“That’s true. Let’s do that. There’s hardly any time left before the curtain goes up. We have to get Chia and discuss everything.”

At that moment, Maki appeared with a sketchbook in her arms.

“Bonjour, Tohko! I came to behold your maid costume. I see that a true beauty really can look good in anything.”

“Argh! Why are you here?! My manager told you I wouldn’t be here till this afternoon!”

“You didn’t expect such an obvious lie to deceive me, did you? Now surrender yourself and let me sketch you.”

Tohko pulled off her apron and shoved it at Maki.

“Unfortunately something extremely urgent has come up. I’ve gotta go.”

“Hey, Tohko! Your shift’s not up yet!”

One of her classmates, also dressed as a maid, rushed over to stop her. Tohko pointed at Maki.

“Make her do it instead.”

“Wait,
what
? Tohkoooo!”

Takeda was dressed in a short festival jacket, selling octopus dumplings from a stall in the school yard, when we met up with her. By the time we’d talked about the changes in the performance, changed into costume, and run into the auditorium, it was only five minutes before the curtain went up.

I stood in the wings with Takeda, our chests heaving as we got our breathing under control.

I was sure that Tohko and Akutagawa were standing by on the opposite side in a similar state.

“That… was pretty close,” said Takeda.

“Y-yeah.”

“I’m glad you came today and didn’t blow the play off. You
are
the one who told me I had to live.”

I glanced over and saw that Takeda wasn’t smiling. Her face and the whisper of her voice were both quite soft and detached.

“I’m just like you, Takeda. I’ve been wearing a mask this whole
time and avoided getting close to people. But if I see this play through to the end, I think I might be able to get past that part of myself. And not just me—Akutagawa might, too.”

“I’d like to see that. If it works, I’ll have some hope, too.”

The stage was as dark as a night that goes on into eternity. I couldn’t make anything out on the other side.

I wondered what Akutagawa was thinking about right now.

I wanted to overcome this together.

I prayed for it so powerfully my heart trembled.

Please, please.

A buzzer rang to announce the curtain’s rising, and we stepped out onto the stage.

In spotlights like moonbeams, Akutagawa and I proceeded slowly past the unopened curtain, he from stage right and I from stage left.

“This is the story of myself, my truest friend Omiya, and the woman I loved.”

My voice went out quietly into the auditorium through the microphone fixed to my collar.

Then came Akutagawa’s deep, resolute voice.

“This is the story of myself, my truest friend Nojima, and the woman he loved.”

The curtain silently lifted, and a third spotlight lit up the center of the stage, illuminating Tohko’s slender back.

Her straight black hair reached her hips. A big ribbon was tied at the back of her head. She wore a bewitching pink kimono with fluttering sleeves and burgundy empire-waisted pants.

“I first met Sugiko in the hallway outside the second floor of the Imperial Theater.”

I wasn’t a professional actor, so of course my performance wasn’t spectacular. I merely pictured the person Nojima was in
my mind, overlaid his emotions on my own, and worked hard to say his lines in a loud, clear voice.