The Book of Heroes (54 page)

I think it was a girl.

Judging from her mother’s reaction, it was clear that she had no idea that Hiroki had been so close to any teacher (nor had Hiroki seen fit to tell her). Even more, the news that there had been a girl Hiroki liked enough to take on a secret summer drive through the mountains hit her like a bolt from the blue.

Things progressed quickly after that.

It had not been but three days since Yuriko’s confession when Ms. Kanehashi visited the Morisaki household. Yuriko had pictured the teacher as a slightly dumpy, kindly lady, but when she saw Ms. Kanehashi standing in front of the apartment door, she found she couldn’t have been more wrong. Ms. Kanehashi was light and slender and moved with a spring in her step, like a fawn. She was cute too, with freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Yuriko wasn’t there when her parents talked to Ms. Kanehashi. She waited in her room, holding her breath and straining her ears to listen. She heard her mother crying a few times, and Ms. Kanehashi crying too.

Hiroki’s teacher had left the school before summer vacation. The school administration had made it clear they didn’t want her to talk about what had happened. But now that she wasn’t working there anymore, all bets were off.

It was another two days before Yuriko’s parents went with Ms. Kanehashi to meet Michiru. When they came home that evening, her parents looked exhausted, and her mother’s eyes were swollen and red from crying.

“Finally I know what he was going through,” Yuriko’s mother said after telling her what they had heard. Her mom put one hand to her chest and began to cry again.

“Mom, Dad? Are you mad at her?”

Her father shook his head, but it was her mother who said, “No, we’re not angry.”

Then she hugged Yuriko to her and whispered, “It’s so sad. So sad,” over and over.

Finally, they know.

Yuriko felt more peace inside her than she had in a while. She hugged her mother back.

It’s now or never
.

“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

She wanted to go back to the reading room, before the books were taken away. And she wanted to go there with Ms. Kanehashi and Michiru.

On the first weekend of summer vacation, six people piled into two cars. The Morisakis led the way, with Ms. Kanehashi, Michiru, and Michiru’s mother in the car behind them. It was a perfect summer day, and they drove out under a blue sky.

When they arrived, Yuriko had her first experience with bushwhacking. The weeds had grown so thick around Minochi’s cottage that they had to pull out every cutter and clipper they could find just to get through.

Surprisingly—or perhaps it wasn’t surprising at all—Michiru never recognized Yuriko as U-ri, the book-spirit that had visited her. Even in different clothes, and without U-ri’s particular speech and tone, Yuriko was sure that her face would give her away, but there was not even a glimmer of recognition in the other girl’s eyes.

Her memory had been erased. That day in the library had never happened as far as Michiru was concerned.

Is this another one of the Circle’s mechanisms
? Yuriko wondered.

“You’re Morisaki’s little sister, aren’t you?” The princess in her damaged tower smiled brightly at Yuriko. “It’s so nice to meet you. Morisaki always used to talk about his ‘little Yuri.’”

Then her voice choked and she apologized, a tear rolling from one eye. Her mother reached down and wiped it from her cheek.

Somehow, Yuriko knew this—them all being here together—was exactly what Hiroki would have wanted.

They started on the first floor and walked together, examining the different rooms and hallways and talking about the past. They took turns speaking. Or crying. And occasionally even laughing. Until they reached the reading room.

Whether she was scared, or just couldn’t bear the weight of her own memories, Michiru didn’t want to go into the reading room. No one else spent very long in there either, giving Yuriko plenty of time to herself.

It was dark inside, even in the middle of the day. The dim light leaked in through the small window. Yuriko would have been able to see if any of the books were shining, even faintly, but not a single one glimmered. Nor did any of them speak a word.

The glyph was gone from the middle of the floor. It had been neatly swept away. Yuriko guessed that Ash had been here and seen to that. Still, it hadn’t kept her from hoping that were she to stand in the reading room alone, something would change—something miraculous might happen.

There were no miracles today.

The Circle was closed, as was her path to the nameless land.

The only thing coming from the countless old books in that room now was an oppressive silence.

She took a step toward the stepladder she had sat on during her previous visit, when something wrapped around her ankle—the same strip of black cloth she had found when she first came here with Aju.

The way it wrapped around her foot was almost lifelike. With a shiver, she reached down to yank it off, and found it surprisingly heavy in her hands.

What is this thing? Wait—

Even as she held it, one edge of the cloth was turning to black dust. She watched as it spread, until the whole length of it had evaporated into fine particles.

Yuriko suddenly realized what it was, the realization coming not from within but as though someone had thrown it into her mind from the outside.

This is the cloth that Mr. Minochi used to hold the Book of Elem.
That’s why I found it lying on the floor. Hiroki must have dropped it when he took the book.

It had been so heavy. Perhaps some enchantment was on it. Something to distract the Hero’s gaze.

She wondered where the book was now.

Perhaps the Hero, now more and more Kirrick every day, had retrieved it. How much of his own fragmented body had Kirrick been able to collect?

But all that was happening far, far away in the Haetlands.

“Aju?” she ventured in a tiny voice. “Aju, are you there?”

There was no response. Yuriko had been ready for this, but still, it was another disappointment. She hoped Aju hadn’t been injured during their run-in with the Hero.

There was a noise behind her, and Yuriko whirled around, expecting to see the tiny mouse there, his whiskers twitching with pride; or the man with strands of ashen gray hair, the tattered hem of his coat dragging on the floorboards—

Michiru was standing in the doorway, a hand on the frame, staring in at her. “Yuriko?”

Yuriko’s heart fell back down into her chest with a thunk.

“Oh, right,” Yuriko said, figuring that the girl had come to find her and bring her back to the others. She made to leave, but Michiru was slowly walking into the reading room toward her.

“This place,” Michiru whispered, the old books that covered the walls absorbing her voice. “It scared me when I was here last time.”

I know,
thought Yuriko.
You told me.

“Is it still scary?”

“No, I guess not. It seems different now.” Michiru smiled at her. “Morisaki liked it here. You should’ve seen the way his eyes shone the one time we came here together. We…used to talk about books.”

“At the library at school?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you ever go to the library in town?”

A shadow came over Michiru’s eyes. “You mean the public library? Not very much.” Then she added in a low voice, “We didn’t want to run into anyone from school.”

Of course
, Yuriko thought.
With both of them being on the committee, it wouldn’t have been strange to find them in the school library, but if someone saw them together outside of school, that would mean they were really friends and were trying to show it to everyone.

Just the kind of attention Michiru didn’t want.

The thought triggered something in Yuriko’s memory, and she blurted out, “Did you know that something happened in that library this last spring? One of the books burned, just by itself.”

Yuriko knew Hiroki had done it with his magic, but she didn’t know why.
Maybe she does
.

“A book burned?” Michiru looked surprised. “No, I hadn’t heard anything like that.”

“Yeah, and the funny thing is, the name of the book was
Making the Most of Household Cleaners
. Who’d burn a book like that—”

Before Yuriko had even finished speaking, Michiru’s complexion changed. In the dim reading room, her face went so pale it seemed to shine like the full moon.

“Who told you that, Yuriko?”

“One of the book—er, a friend at the library.”

“Were they mad?”

“No, more like confused.”

Michiru put a hand to her throat and took a deep breath. Even in that dusty, dark room, her profile was beautiful.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I think Morisaki did it. For me,” she added quietly. “When all the kids were picking on me at school I got depressed, and I-I thought seriously about killing myself.”

Yuriko straightened her posture and listened.

“There are some kinds of household cleaners that you’re not supposed to mix together. If you do, it makes poison gas. I…I was going to mix them in the bath.”

Finally it made sense. “And that book told you which ones? So you borrowed the book?”

“I did, but that was just around the time that Morisaki started looking out for me.”

She had never taken that bath. Her plans for suicide had been shelved.

“I told Morisaki about it later. And then he told me he would get rid of that book, so I wouldn’t ever be tempted to do that sort of thing again.” Michiru covered her face with her hands and crouched there in the reading room. “And then he got rid of it, I guess.”

Yuriko pictured the scene in her mind. Maybe Hiroki hadn’t planned on burning the book at first, but once he had the Book of Elem in his hands, and was fully under the Hero’s sway, it must have seemed like the perfect target for testing his newfound powers.

He was protecting Michiru again, of course.

He wouldn’t regret what he had done, even now. He’d be satisfied. His incomplete self as a nameless devout had been erased, closing the gate and protecting this world, Michiru’s world, from the ravages of the King in Yellow.

Yuriko knelt, closing her eyes, letting herself dissolve into the silence of the room. From the bookshelves, the books watched over the girls in the slanting light from the window. Though now they might be pretending to be nothing more than pages bound in leather, Yuriko knew the truth.

Or at least, she hoped they were watching.

Another two weeks passed.

It was a hot afternoon, filled with the buzzing of cicadas in the trees. Yuriko had just gotten back from swimming lessons at the pool, had eaten lunch, and was feeling very ready for a nap. Her mother had gone out to do some grocery shopping.

The news on the television was talking about a war overseas. There were other reports of things happening in her own country—random murders, senseless atrocities. Yuriko knew what it all meant. War was coming. Another age of conflict loomed.

But, recently, she had begun to make her own sort of peace with that. There was a lot of bad news for sure, but it wasn’t like the end of the world was at her door, ringing the doorbell just yet.

It wasn’t that she didn’t care. The realization that there was very little she could do about it had settled on her heart, like the dust collecting on the furniture in Ichiro Minochi’s cottage.

A feeling of powerlessness was slowly building up inside her with each passing day, and she found she didn’t mind it so much.

The doorbell rang.

Not now! I was just about to drift off—

“Yes?” she called out halfheartedly, and opened the door with the safety chain still on to find a strange man smiling in at her. His broad grin showed a full set of perfect teeth. When he saw Yuriko, he nodded. Even in this heat, he wore a heavy-looking suit with a necktie wrapped tightly around his collar.

“Yuriko Morisaki?”

The way he said her name sounded strange. The intonation was all wrong.
Wait, he’s not Japanese?
The man certainly looked Japanese.