Chapter 181

Chapter 1—My President and My Girlfriend “This poetry collection by Misuzu Kaneko is like cherry-leaf rice cakes. The coarse, gummy pink cake gently enfolds the sweet bean paste inside.” Tohko whispered with an ecstatic look on her face, gulping down the fragment of the page she’d ripped off. She didn’t even have to come to school right now because she was studying for her college exams, and yet she was casually eating books in the clubroom in February. I thought she was crazy, but Tohko had declared, “I passed my National Center Test, so I’ll be fine! I have to take a little break anyway.” I don’t know whether it was out of confidence or carelessness, but she started showing up at the clubroom. And so, while she was waiting for the improv stories she snacked on to be done, she sat with her feet perched on a fold-up chair next to the window where she expounded on a book enthusiastically while flipping and munching and crunching through the pages of it. “Misuzu Kaneko was a children’s poet from Yamaguchi Prefecture, born on April 11, 1903—the thirty-sixth year of the Meiji emperor’s reign. Her hometown was a port city with plentiful whaling where her family ran a bookstore. She got married and had kids, and she wrote poetry the whole time. “Every one of her poems tastes free and relaxed and cute and gentle. “When it comes to cherry-leaf rice cakes, you have the eastern style from Chomeiji Temple, where the bean paste is sandwiched inside a smooth cake, and the western style of Domyoji Temple, where a mealy cake is wrapped around the bean paste. I think Kaneko’s poems are definitely mealy. When you bite through a salt-pickled cherry leaf and into the soft cake with cute little bumps in it, the leaf shatters, scattering the fragrance of cherry blossoms everywhere while your white teeth sink slowly into the cake to reach the faint sweetness of the beans! C’mon, you’ve heard this poem before, haven’t you, Konoha?” Tohko closed her eyes and recited the poem in a clear voice. “Even when I spread my arms wide, I cannot soar into the sky, not even for a second, But the birds who can Cannot run swiftly over the earth like I do. “Even when I sway my body, I cannot make a beautiful sound come out, But the chirping sparrow Does not know as many songs as I do. “The sparrow, the birds, and me: We are all different, and we are all special.” She opened her eyes, turned to me, and beamed rapturously. “Isn’t that great? ‘We are all different, and we are all special.’ This part is really, especially sweet and delicious!” And so she crinkled through her meal, her eyes closed happily while she went on about “the beans cling to your tongue” or “it’s sweet, but not too wordy; I could keep eating forever.” “Kaneko died at the age of twenty-six, but they say she was an incredibly serious person, very warm and kind. She suffered a lot of hardships. But her younger brother, the person who was closest to her, protected the notebooks in which she’d written her poems.” She hugged the book that had half its pages torn out of it. Just when I thought she was going to murmur how deeply moved she was, she looked back at me and hurried me on with a bubbly expression. “Time’s almost up, Konoha. Is my snack ready?” “Here you go. You had the ‘owl,’ ‘hot spring,’ and ‘accordion curtains,’ right?” I tore out the three lined pages of the improv story I’d just written and handed them over. Tohko reached out her alabaster hands and beamed even more. “Thanks. Here goes!” As her eyes fell exuberantly on the words, her delicate fingers carefully tore in from the edge of the paper. She brought the piece of paper to her lips and crunched her teeth into it. “Once you finish that, you should go straight home and study.” “Geez. You shouldn’t say things like that when your president was worried about her underclassman and came to see how he was doing. Ooh, this part’s great!” She had pouted her cheeks out to complain, but they stretched into a smile so easily. “The owl’s got stiff shoulders, so he’s going to a hot spring to recuperate. And there are accordion curtains going all the way around the spring! It’s so cute and fairy tale-ish. Like eating steamed buns that are still billowing with sweet steam. There’s potatoes inside, all fluffy. Ahhh, and with a rustle of the accordion curtains, music begins to play.” With a chorus of sighs at how delicious everything was, her fingers tore into the page. “Konoha, at first you’d write only weird stuff that didn’t have any punctuation marks or that ended with someone suddenly falling down a manhole or getting a leg massage from a ghost, but you’ve really gotten good.” “That so?” The earlier work had been purely to torment her, though. Tohko looked incredibly happy and grinned, taking one bite and then another. “When are your exams again?” “The middle of March. My last day of exams is still a long way off.” “That’s not far away at all! That’ll be over before you know it.” Had she forgotten how she’d washed out of the qualifying exam when she tried to take the test for Tokyo University during the first round of exams? She claimed she’d done that one for the memories, but she was being so reckless. How had her teachers not quit? No matter how I looked at it, it seemed likely she was going to fail. Was she so confident she’d pass for her top pick? No, she’s just freewheeling and thoughtless. “What schools are you planning to take exams for exactly?” “That’s a secret,” Tohko answered blithely as she ate my story. “If I pass, then I’ll tell you. You have to celebrate with me.” “How many years from now will that be?” “You’re so meeean. You think I’m going to fail! You don’t have any faith in your president, do you?” “How could anyone have faith in a president who makes her underclassman help her with summer homework?” “That was just because I happened to run out of time! Fine. In that case I’m definitely going to pass and show you what I’m capable of.” She declared stalwartly. Then she popped a fragment of paper in her mouth, and her eyes instantly rolled back. “Urk—s… so spicy!!” She flinched and covered her mouth with her hands as her eyes grew bleary. “Wh-what is this? I was listening to elegant music at a hot spring, but now the accordion curtain opened and out came an owl spattered with blood. Whaaa—? Revenge? Wait—oh no! There’re globs of lumpy mustard right in the middle of my steamed bunnnns! Ack, you’re so mean! Evil! It’s all lumpy and spicyyyy.” Fat tears spilled from her dark black eyes as she glared spitefully at me. “Urrrgh… it was a feint.” “But the shock went through your brain and you’re all refreshed now, right?” I said it with a smile, and Tohko whispered, “… I don’t want a shock like that…” All of a sudden, our routine conversation made my heart twist. As if I wanted to continue these meaningless talks in this tiny room filled by the gentle golden light before the sun set. It was an eerie feeling. But… I looked at the clock on the wall and gasped. “Sorry, I have to get going.” Tohko had thrown herself against the chair and shrunk into a blubbering ball, but when I started hurriedly packing up my mechanical pencil and notebook, she looked up. “Are you meeting up with Nanase?” “Wh—?… Uh, I’m…”