Chapter 180

Prologue—Memories for an Introduction: What She Wished for That Day It doesn’t matter who you are. If you want to find God, you have to be alone. There was a person who told me that in a sisterly tone. When I started high school, I had at my side a president who looked after me like an older sister. A book girl with long black braids that reached her waist, who at first glance looked old-fashioned and genteel. And yet she had a pushy way of talking and caused trouble for everyone around her, and when classes had ended for the day, she would come all the way to my first-year classroom to fetch me. At first I couldn’t stand her. But no matter how much I ignored her, no matter how much I scrunched my face up in annoyance and turned away from her, no matter how bitingly sarcastic I was, she would blubber and sulk, but the next day she would be beaming like a flower and appear in my classroom with a “Club time, Konoha!” One summer morning I caught her climbing a tree at school. Apparently she believed that if you tied a ribbon around a tree branch without anyone seeing you, your wish would come true. It was a girly and totally baseless legend that had been passed down through the generations of our school. Her eyes were focused straight ahead and there was a look of intense concentration on her face as she untied the turquoise ribbon at the front of her uniform. She was just starting to tie it on the end of a branch when she lost her balance and almost fell. That was when she noticed me watching. She turned bright red and got flustered. “A baby bird fell out of its nest, so I was putting it back.” That was the kind of childish excuse she made up. But I wonder what she was trying to wish for with her turquoise ribbon that day. She lingers in my memory, joyously flipping through the pages of a book in the cramped clubroom filled with the gentle golden light of sunset. I wonder who she was. I wonder what was going through her mind as she sat beside me, constantly wearing her kind smile, while I faced my lined paper. What had the book girl wished for that day?