Book Girl and the Famished Spirit (23 page)

The reason she had originally begun cycling through boys was that it let her be with him; she could feel his gaze, his footsteps, his presence. The boys were always worthless, and they would hit her and call her names, but she appeared to feel sorry for
them.

He followed her everywhere and eliminated the boys one after another, but like her, he was cornered and he descended into anorexia.

They could not live without each other even so, but he returned to the house only once, and after he had given her food, he told her that he would never be back.

She had gone wild, deranged, had stabbed Ryuto Sakurai when he arrived in the middle of it, and in the end she even locked Tohko and Konoha in the basement room and tried to incinerate them.

I gave up.

It was impossible for an amateur writer like me to control this convoluted and wandering story or to get it back on track.

Holding my head in my hands, I may have wished for the storm to come.

For a new storm full of flashing willpower to blow the roiling tempest in the story even farther away.

So when Tohko discerned that the structure of this story was that of
Wuthering Heights,
I was relieved. I may have guided Tohko to the site of their confrontation.

I prayed that perhaps this “book girl” would be able to lead the story back to its original course.

Just as I expected, Tohko set off the storm and swept away the grime that had coated their hearts. All that was left was the naked truth.

But at the same time, it became clear that the only person he truly loved was Kayano Kujo and that Hotaru would never be more than her mother’s shadow. For him, only Kayano could be the other half of his soul, his eternity.

Even after hearing his cruel admission, still she had smiled in her last moments.

Father…,
she had whispered, closing her eyes in his embrace.

It was magnificent.

She was not Catherine Linton, who had been imprisoned in
Wuthering Heights and whose destiny had been twisted by Heathcliff, the vengeful ogre. She was a different Catherine Earnshaw and he a different Heathcliff.

Because this was no daughter of the refined Edgar Linton made of frost and moonlight—she was the daughter of Heathcliff made of heat and lightning—I suppose it was only natural that the story diverged from
Wuthering Heights
partway through.

And the blue-eyed Heathcliff, a captive to his hatred, was not a true demon, either. He was just an ordinary man who had loved Kayano and who had been hurt and exhausted.

This is how their story resolved, but the story I had been writing was a mixture of my own imagination and fabrication and might have become something else entirely.

As if perhaps a different
Wuthering Heights
had come into being other than the one that the nagging, good-natured, and meddlesome but still somehow frigid Ellen Dean had told.

If some other person told this story, perhaps it would become something utterly different.

After Emily Brontë, the author of
Wuthering Heights,
died, her sister Charlotte wrote an essay in the preface defending the book from its critics. Charlotte wanted to show the world the true value, the true fire, of the book that her beloved sister had poured her entire soul into writing.

But I never intended to protect them. I had not meant to be their spokesperson.

I would not contradict anyone, no matter how bizarre his actions and her feelings seemed; no matter if no one understood them, I would not contradict them.

I had wanted her to see her love freely, however she wanted to. Even if that was wrong, even if I could never be forgiven for
it, even if it went against society’s morals or ethics to do as her heart desired, free
—

In that last moment, her soul had flashed like lightning.

I will probably never show anyone this story that I have spent six months writing. If only one person in the entire world knows about it—that is enough.

Amemiya’s funeral was held quietly at a church just before summer vacation started.

Buried in white lilies, her eyes closed and smiling, Amemiya’s face was peaceful in death, and she seemed happy.

Before the burial, Maki placed a diary with a fine russet cover into the casket. She told us it was her diary from when she was a child, but the cover still looked new.

As she straightened, pressed her rich lips together, and watched Amemiya’s final moments with dignity, I wondered what she was thinking. She had explained that she’d counseled Amemiya because she thought it would benefit her family to have Amemiya join it, but I wondered if there wasn’t actually a completely different reason she’d done it.

The day we found out that Amemiya had breathed her last at the hospital, I was writing an improv story after school. The prompts Tohko had given me were the same as they had been once before: “apple orchard,” “flower swing,” and “fully automatic washing machine.”

In the center of an apple orchard bathed in clear light and a pure, tangy fragrance, a boy and a girl tossed clothes into a fully automatic washing machine.
Hey, let’s wash this, too! Oh, and this and this!
They giggled and danced around the washing machine. They played on a flower swing beside the rattling appliance. The boy pushed the
girl, and she swung higher and higher into the clear blue sky; then she returned to him, again and again, never slowing.

Amemiya and Kurosaki—daughter and father—could never have been united romantically, but perhaps in the world of the imagination…

The western sun splashed into the dusty room in golden waves where Tohko sat on a metal fold-up chair, her slender finger pressed to her lips, reading my story with a subdued expression.

Then she tore off a corner and put it in her mouth.

She tore off more and slowly chewed it, then again, tears filling her eyes.

“It’s like apples boiled with lemons and honey and wine, then chilled until it’s a very cold applesauce… It’s… very sweet. I love it,” she whispered, setting the paper on the table.

Tohko didn’t eat any more of the story. She rolled the paper into a tube and then tied a violet ribbon around it. “Let’s give this to Hotaru.”

Next, she ate the notes that Amemiya had left in the book club mailbox. The sun had dyed the room an angry red.

She held each note in her hands, gazed at each one of the numbers written on it with her clear, dark eyes, and though her throat trembled occasionally and her eyes watered with pain and sadness, Tohko continued to eat until she had finished the very last one.

The strings of ordinary numbers written on the shredded notes had transformed into the story of one girl’s emotions.

I wondered if Tohko could detect that spirit, that truth, when she ate the notes.

I stood beside Tohko, looking down at Amemiya as she slept on her bed of white lilies, and remembered her last words.

When Amemiya had called Kurosaki “father,” she had thrust a blade into his heart, but hadn’t she done it because she never wanted him to forget her?

If so, then at the very end of it all, Amemiya had attained her dream.

I was sure Kurosaki would never forget that word whispered to him with a smile.

Amemiya never could have competed with Kayano romantically, and that word—
father
—was the best revenge Amemiya could have gotten. It was a confession, a final stab that cost her life.

Amemiya deserved no pity: She was not a girl tossed cruelly about by fate.

She was a wild, strong girl who had changed her story through the force of her will.

She was a girl who had loved with the force of a storm.

That night in the chemistry lab, I had met a Catherine who pursued Heathcliff.

And I wondered if Heathcliff, left behind by two Catherines—Kayano Kujo and Hotaru Amemiya—would go on living in solitude, nursing the ravenous hunger in his heart.

When he attended the funeral, Kurosaki had been haggard and thin, his skin papery, and rough stubble had been growing on his face. Anguish, despair, and physical pain mingled in his flashing eyes. He looked like a criminal suffering from a torture that gave him not a moment’s relief.

Would salvation ever reach him as well?

Maybe he didn’t want it. Maybe he would wander the gusting storms of the moor to seek out the shades of the women he loved.

After the funeral, Maki gave Ryuto a letter that Amemiya had entrusted to her.

Ryuto ripped it open and read it on the spot. Partway through, his hands and shoulders shook minutely and his face twisted. Finally, through his tears, he ripped the letter into tiny pieces.

“I didn’t want her to tell me she was sorry or to thank me or anythin’. Hotaru—I wish you’d loved me. If we’d had more time, I would have taken you a bunch more places. I would have fed you all sorts of stuff and fattened you up.”

The torn-up letter fluttered through the ranks of crosses like white petals scattering in the breeze. Tears rolled down Ryuto’s cheeks.

A fine rain began to fall, landing on Ryuto’s bent head and shoulders.

Tohko held her lavender-colored umbrella over him.

In a trembling voice, he told us to go on without him, that he wanted to stay a little longer.

Tohko pressed the umbrella into Ryuto’s hand, a mournful look on her face.

Maki went home with Takamizawa in her car. She offered us a ride, but Tohko said she wanted to walk home, so I said that I would, too.

Sharing my dark blue umbrella, we walked together down the road hemmed in by a gray sky.

The summer rain was quiet and warm.

Tohko wasn’t crying, but she was less talkative than usual and her eyelashes cast shadows over her black eyes. Her sadness came through without her saying a word.

I talked about trivial things, listening to the sound of the rain hitting my umbrella in the background.

I talked about how my midterms had gone, that such and such
had happened at my house, what books I’d read recently, CDs I liked… about Kotobuki…

“Nanase said she gets out of the hospital this week.”

“Oh? That’s good. You know, Kotobuki covered for me that day. It wasn’t her fault that I shouted at everyone.”

Tohko glanced at me. She smiled faintly without asking why I had been so upset.

“Really? Nanase is so nice.”

Maybe she was.

Maybe I would try visiting her again before she was released. If I talked to her properly without expecting failure, maybe we could improve our relations.

Tohko turned her eyes ahead again and in a gentle voice told me, “You know, reading
Wuthering Heights
makes me hungry, but… I love that book. I think it ends happily. Before she died, Emily Brontë was supposed to be working on another book. I wonder what that mysterious second novel would have been like.”

Her eyelashes drooped and she closed her eyes, as if imagining what it might taste like.

Miu Inoue had disappeared without ever publishing a second work.

I would never write another novel.

But if I were to write another, I wonder what it might taste like.

Her eyes still closed, Tohko whispered, “Write me another love story, Konoha.”

“Okay. One with a ghost in it?”

“No! Not that!”

She looked so funny as her eyes snapped open and she refused frantically.

“No ghosts, promise!” she emphasized, pouting. My face naturally relaxed and my heart warmed.

“Okay, okay. But if you do anything crazy, you’re getting a full course of ghosts,” I told her deliberately, making her that much more frantic and sulky. I savored this bite of modest everyday life.

I couldn’t go back to the past.

I didn’t know what sort of future I was heading toward.

But everyone lives an uncertain tale of injury and tears and occasional healing.

With sulking, laughing, frustration and grumpiness, making jibes and laughing again, we continued walking through the summer rain.