Chapter 184

Chapter 2—The Day You Betrayed Me “Aaargh, Ryu really went to your house after all?” It was the next day. I’d gone to school early and was talking to Takeda in the deserted library. The night before, I’d texted her that I wanted to talk about Ryuto, and she’d responded, I’ll leave the door to the library unlocked. Swing on by before homeroom. “Ryu’s been picking on Nanase a reeeal long time, so I thought he might go.” I gaped as she told me all this in a breezy, high-pitched, childlike voice. “Ryuto wasn’t coming here to see you?!” “Nooope. He was after Nanase, not me. At first he would flirt with her like he does with everybody, but Nanase was totally focused on you and she starts to dislike people so easily, so even Ryu couldn’t get things to go the way they usually do. Nanase didn’t budge an inch. It was really fun to watch. So then Ryu gave up on trying to seduce her and started picking on her, telling her all kinds of stuff to make her nervous. It looked like that tactic worked pretty well.” “Why would he do that?” “Because he wanted to make her break up with you, no?” “ ’Cos you’re goin’ out with her. Even though you’re Tohko’s author.” I recalled vividly what Ryuto had said to me, glaring at me intensely, and goose bumps prickled on the back of my neck. I couldn’t believe Ryuto and Kotobuki had been talking like that without me knowing! Although when I’d asked Kotobuki about Ryuto, she’d hung her head and looked troubled. I felt such rage at my blindness that it was like my stomach was boiling. “Why didn’t you tell me about it, Takeda?” Takeda laughed airily. “Come on, I’m Ryu’s girlfriend. I could never tattle on my man.” “Well, I heard Ryuto was going out with other girls, too.” “He sure is.” Her eyes crinkled innocently, like a puppy’s. “See, when I say I’m his girlfriend, it’s ‘semi.’ It’s more like I’m his accomplice, I guess.” I felt another chill at the word accomplice. “You don’t mean you were harassing Kotobuki, too, do you?” Takeda had caused Kotobuki to fall down the stairs at the hospital before. As I paled, Takeda laughed harshly. “Oh, no way. I didn’t do anything this time! Besides, if I had to pick, I’d say I’m supporting Nanase right now. She didn’t let that Asakura girl beat her, and even though she knows what I did to her—even though she found out I’m a liar—she didn’t change. I was a little bit impressed at how strong she is, despite her weakness.” Takeda told me all this with a sunny look on her face, and I felt conflicted, wondering if I could believe what she was saying. “I’m sorry!” When I apologized to her during a break between classes, Kotobuki’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t do a very good job of protecting you yesterday, and I’m sorry. And I’m really sorry that I didn’t pick up on the fact that Ryuto was saying all that stuff to you.” “It-it’s not your fault. Actually, I-I’m sorry I left so suddenly yesterday. What he was saying wasn’t even that bad. I just couldn’t deal with it right then.” Kotobuki was flustered. Her lowered eyes, which seemed ready to burst with tears, sent a knife through my heart. “Sakurai was right; it’s because I have no confidence. And you do look like you’re better suited to Tohko. When I found out Tohko brought cream puffs to your house, I thought maybe she…” “It’s not like that. Tohko only thinks of me as her errand boy.” Kotobuki looked up and smiled brightly. I knew she was forcing herself to do it, but she was doing her best to keep me from worrying. The corners of her mouth trembled slightly. “You’re right. Tohko’s got her boyfriend in Hokkaido. She told me he’s a great guy who looks really good in a white scarf. It would be weird for her to get jealous given that.” I knew that Tohko had said that only to look cool. She didn’t have a boyfriend. “Yeah… exactly.” But I couldn’t tell Kotobuki that. I nodded. “I’ll try harder! I mean… um… so that you can be more comfortable than you are with Tohko.” I watched her make this admirable declaration, and my throat tightened and my chest ached. Kotobuki had said the same thing about Miu. I’d unintentionally pushed Kotobuki away, but she’d believed in me to the end and made me stronger. I was the one who needed to step it up. To appreciate Kotobuki. To care for her even more. Next time, I was going to protect her! After school, Kotobuki went home with her friends. She said they’d made plans to go shopping. “We can go home together tomorrow!” “Okay. Let’s go somewhere on the way home then.” “O-okay. Definitely.” Kotobuki reached out for my hand covertly, shyly, so that no one would see, and I touched hers. I left the classroom a little after her. Instead of going to the book club, I went straight to the front doors, put on my street shoes, and went outside. It was February, but the cold hadn’t alleviated at all. The air was sharply dry and cold. It felt as if it were scraping at my skin. I gripped my cell phone in my numb hand and called Ryuto’s number. I was going to ask him not to bother Kotobuki anymore. And I was going to tell him that I wasn’t Tohko’s author and I had no intention of ever writing a novel again. As the phone was ringing, I walked through the school gate. “Inoue?” An adult voice called my name. I turned around, my cell phone still at my ear. A car passed by on the road next to me with a loud roar. Standing starkly among the winter-blasted trees that lined the sidewalk was a placid-looking man. He was older than my father and wore a dark brown suit. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Inoue? Do you remember me?” His soft voice, like dry leaves falling in the breeze, dragged over my skin—over my heart. Of course I hadn’t forgotten him. The greeting on Ryuto’s voice mail was playing in my ear, but it grew fuzzier and more distant and I became aware of the pulse of time passing, then winding backward. A deep darkness assaulted me from the past, despair like an echoing scream that pierced the sky—a shadow fell across my vision and my heart stopped. I was frozen in place. The person before me was the man who had been Miu Inoue’s agent. It was the spring of my third year in middle school. A fourteen-year-old girl named Miu Inoue had been chosen for the top spot in a literary magazine’s new author competition, the youngest winner in its history, and the story had made the news. The winning story was made into a book, and the moment it went on sale it became a best seller, was made into a movie and a TV series, both of which were major hits that broke records. It got to the point that people said the story was a social phenomenon. The publishing company hid Miu Inoue’s true identity, didn’t even reveal her sex, nothing but the fact that she was fourteen. Although that whipped up the readers’ curiosity even more and people said she was a coddled, bookish rich girl who had never lifted anything heavier than a pen. Then Miu vanished without ever publishing another book. That’s because Miu Inoue was neither a coddled rich girl nor a book girl spilling over with talent: She was ordinary middle school student Konoha Inoue—me. “It must be almost three years now.” At a coffee shop frequented by adults, I sat across from the man who had been my agent. The shop’s interior was made to look antique with soft velvet couch cushions and dim lighting. The white steam of my drink tickled my nose with the pungent aroma of coffee. Mr. Sasaki gazed at me, an elegant cup with a green-and-turquoise pattern on it in his hand, then murmured nostalgically, “When I first met you, I was surprised that a middle school student could have actually written that book. “At the same time, I realized that perhaps no one but that boy could have written it. I think that story—it may be that only you, only at age fourteen, could have written it. Even now I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been involved in making it into a book.” The corners of his eyes crinkled and his face became gentle. He was no different from two years ago. The memories of days gone by made something deep in my chest ache. This person had never blamed me. I’d been oppressed by the pretense of being a creative genius at the age of fourteen, and my heart was destroyed by Miu jumping off a roof right in front of me. I had started having attacks where I couldn’t breathe, or I’d sobbed that I couldn’t write anymore, that I hated books, and he had looked at me with a deep gaze, as if he, too, was hurting. I don’t remember what we talked about the last time we’d spoken. I kept repeating that I didn’t want to see anyone, buried under blankets, shaking and curled up in my bed in my room with the curtains closed. It got so that people stopped coming to see me. My life had ended for the first time then. I took a mouthful of coffee and tasted its bitterness. I was seized by the bizarre feeling that the past was wavering before me like a mirage, though I had sworn I would never go back there. My fourteen-year-old self was looking uneasily at me through the steam rising from my cup. Though it was intangible, the pain that lingered in my heart was sharp. “I never expected you to say that to me. I caused you so many problems…” I hadn’t had any sense of responsibility. I’d been a child. But at the time I was unable to write a single word. Something sad came into Mr. Sasaki’s eyes. “A lot of authors are sensitive people. Even adults feel the pressure and lose the ability to write under the stress. And I would say that in middle school, you faced many more difficulties. “The first time we spoke, I thought you were a young man with a very pure, gentle heart. “I wanted to help you grow up right, so you could stay like that without getting hurt. That’s why we didn’t publish a single profile on you. To protect you. But maybe that haunted you more. The name Miu Inoue got to be too big.” Mr. Sasaki lowered his eyes and tightened his fingers around his coffee cup. “It’s an editor’s job to get an author to write good stories, but I wasn’t able to do that. I hurt you so badly that you said you didn’t want to write anymore. As your agent, I share the fault for losing Miu Inoue. I apologize.” Seeing him bow his head to me, my chest filled with remorse. I was the one who’d been unable to meet his expectations. And I’d thought they sold Miu Inoue as a masked author because it was good for publicity. I hadn’t known that Mr. Sasaki was trying to protect me. I really had been a stupid, powerless child. I’d been unable to understand anything, and all I did was run away. My voice strong, I said, “There’s no reason to be sorry. Like you said, I could only have written that novel then, when I was fourteen. A middle school kid who barely knew the rules of grammar managed to write something that felt like writing a diary, almost by accident—that’s all it was. It wasn’t my actual skill—so I never had the talent to write a sequel.” “I wonder.” Mr. Sasaki looked at me, his face frank, and his voice came out thickly. “I don’t think that’s true. I’ve always hoped that you would start to write again.” “I…” My hands trembled slightly and my whisper of a voice was rough. Mr. Sasaki’s earnest gaze was right in front of me. “Do you think we could work together again? It’s been more than two years since it happened. Couldn’t you write another story now?” Write a novel? Again? A sharp pang pierced the core of my brain like an arrow. Me? Write again? In the growing, aching heat of my brain, Tohko’s face appeared. “When you write your novel, let me read it, okay?” She had said that to me so kindly. But a novel—I— Intense pain, as if a hand had seized my heart in its grip and were squeezing it out between its fingers. And terror, as if I had been cast into utter darkness. They assaulted me in raging waves. I had stopped denying Miu Inoue’s novel. That night at the planetarium, I had sworn to move into the future. But it was a future I would reach as Konoha Inoue, not Miu Inoue! Miu Inoue didn’t exist at the end of the path I would go down. The one thing I was not going to be was an author. Tohko’s face, Miu’s face, and Kotobuki’s face as she held back tears—they rose up alternately in my mind. I wasn’t going to lose anything ever again. Not the peaceful, easy life I led day to day, not my true and honest friends, and not my awkward yet kind girlfriend who cared about me. “Don’t forget that, please. You are Tohko’s author.” I shook off Ryuto’s voice, hard. The only thing left in my mind was the image of Kotobuki smiling awkwardly. Of the girlfriend whom I had just decided I would treasure. I wasn’t going to fail again! I was going to live my life as Konoha Inoue, protecting the people I cared about! I looked back into Mr. Sasaki’s eyes and forced myself to smile. “Thank you. I feel fortunate to have you ask me that. But I’m satisfied with myself now, not being Miu Inoue. I’m happy now, so I won’t go back to being that person. And I’m not going to write any novels.” For one moment… … I felt as if Tohko’s voice were tickling at my ear. But I couldn’t tell what emotion was behind it or what she said. “If you change your mind, I’d like you to contact me.” When I got home, I crumpled up the business card Mr. Sasaki had given me and threw it in the trash. That night, when I descended from my room on the second floor to take a bath, the doorbell rang, announcing a visitor. It was close to nine o’clock. Who could it be at this hour? When I peered through the peephole on the front door, I saw long braids. My heart almost stopped. I quickly undid the chain and opened the door. A wave of cold air blew in from outside, stabbing at my skin and making my bones shake. In the freezing darkness stood Tohko, pale as if with illness, breathing in white clouds, her shoulders heaving. She had once insisted that every time she left the house she had to wear her uniform, but now she was wearing a sweater and a long skirt under her navy-blue duffle coat. That was strange enough, but one of her braids was half unraveled and wild, and her purplish lips were trembling. Her brows were tightly knit, and in her black eyes, fixed on me, I saw flashes of fierce pain and despair. I’d never seen Tohko look this way before! “What happened?” Tohko’s face crumpled and she looked like she was about to cry. Then she reached out with both hands and grabbed on to my chest. The instant her white fingertips brushed my throat, I got goose bumps at their icicle frigidity. “Why?!” she begged, her voice hoarse like a broken flute, and immediately she began to cough. She clung to my shirt the entire time as she coughed roughly, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. Her pale fingers trembled. “Just come inside. You’ll catch cold if we stand here talking!” She was swaying like a ghost, and I put my arm around her shoulders and tried to lead her up to my room on the second floor, but Tohko shook her head violently and wouldn’t move. “Why, Konoha?!” Her shoulders felt shockingly thin and cold under my arm. Had Tohko always been this frail? Had her shoulders always been so weak? “Why?! Why?!” She pleaded like a child, grabbing my arm with both hands. She looked up at me plaintively, her eyes swimming with tears and her jaw clenched tight in pain. The wind blew through the open door in knifelike gusts, scraping at my skin. Tohko’s streaming hair hit my face more than once. Her panting breath turned cloudy white as soon as she exhaled. My mind was in chaos and refused to function. Why did Tohko look so tortured? What was she trying to tell me? In any case, if I didn’t get her upstairs, my mother was going to find us. When I started trying to drag her upstairs, Tohko yanked hard on my arm and moaned. “Why… why did you tell Mr. Sasaki that you were never going to write again? Are you really never going to write another novel?” The shock cut through my body like a knife. Mr. Sasaki?! Why was his name coming up at a time like this? Not to mention—! How did she know that I’d run into Mr. Sasaki or what we’d talked about? Did Tohko know Mr. Sasaki?! The events of today, the events of the past, names, faces swirled chaotically in tendrils of fire inside my mind. I stood rigidly, unsure of what I should say or how, and Tohko screamed shrilly at me. “How could you—to think that you’d never write again—why?! Why, Konoha? Why would you say that you won’t write?” Grabbing hold of my arm, Tohko swung it back and forth with all her strength. She asked me, “Why? Why?” over and over, her eyes tinged with despair and pain. How? How did Tohko know about Mr. Sasaki? Letting myself be shaken, her unraveled braid and thin shoulders jumped in and out of my line of sight again and again. Tohko’s face was twisted and she was screaming! “Why would you say that you wouldn’t go back to Miu Inoue?! Didn’t Mr. Sasaki tell you that you could probably write another book now? That you should try writing again—” How did she know this? How was it possible?! How did she know that I’d seen Mr. Sasaki?! My heart lurched. Tohko who always smiled so placidly, Tohko who murmured kindly to me when I was in pain—she was criticizing me, assaulting my emotions, attacking me, looking like she was going to cry! “Why, why did you turn him down?! Why did you throw it away?! How could you possibly say that you have no talent?!” Her body was freezing cold, but her grip on my arm was hot and painful. It felt like my brain, my heart, everything was burning. My throat ached. Footsteps approached us. “What’s all this noise, Konoha?” I shouted, “It’s nothing!” then shoved Tohko through the door; I went out, too, in only my socks, and shut the door. The fierce sounds beating at me erased my mother’s voice calling, “Konoha!” “You knew about Mr. Sasaki?!” My voice was so harsh it even made me shudder. In the darkness faintly illuminated by the streetlight, Tohko’s eyes opened wide. The wind swirled around us with a moan. “Have you always known that I was Miu Inoue?!” Tohko didn’t answer. Her brows still firmly knit, she looked at me with an expression of intense anguish. “Is that true? Did you know? And you got closer to me in order to make me write another book? And when you dragged me into the book club and made me write improv stories and kept me with you all the time, you had your eye on my next book!” It wasn’t true! It couldn’t be that simple! Why wasn’t she saying anything? Why was she looking at me with such pain in her eyes?