Chapter 194

Chapter 7—The Girl with the Violet Barrette The next morning, when blinding light streamed through the gap in the curtains, Tohko woke up. “You still have a fever. I wrote a little story for your breakfast, so have that, take your medicine, and take things easy.” As I spoke, I put a hand to her forehead to check her temperature, which made Tohko’s cheeks flush slightly. “… Did you stay the night, Konoha?” “I couldn’t leave someone that sick by themselves, could I?” Tohko looked like there was something she wanted to say, but she seemed strangely unable to find the words. After dropping her eyes and pressing her lips together or half opening them, she whispered simply, “… Thank you.” “Wh-what’s done is done. Also, if you can move, you should change clothes. You sweated a lot.” “Mmr… I will,” she answered in embarrassment, then shuffled to get up. She took a change of clothes out of a drawer, and then, hugging them in her arms, she staggered out of the room. “Are you all right?” I started to lend a hand, but her head bowed as her cheeks flushed again. “I’m fine.” After that, changed into new light blue pajamas and with neatly rebraided hair, Tohko sat down in her bed, then tore up the breakfast I’d written and ate it on her own. “… It tastes great. It’s warm and… gentle, and… it’s like a cabbage, bacon, and mushroom soup,” she whispered, smiling slightly. “And the story you wrote me yesterday was very sweet, like rice porridge boiled in milk… It was delicious. It tasted like my mother’s.” “I want my mom’s food…” Pain shot through my chest. Did Tohko remember her tearful plea? Her placid gaze turned melancholy. As she nibbled appreciatively on my story, Tohko murmured tenderly, “My mom’s food was sweet and warm, and even if I was sad about something, I could forget about it when I ate her food. It was like she cast a spell on it. She always used to tell me that she wanted to write a story like manna.” “Manna?” “It’s a kind of food mentioned in the Bible, in the story of Moses. His people were hungry and wandering through the wilderness, and God rained pure white manna down on them. It was as thin as a layer of frost and as sweet as honey. And God kept showering His people with manna until they reached the promised land of Canaan.” A gentle light touched her clear eyes. As if she were picturing the scene in her mind’s eye… Heavenly nourishment raining down on a wasteland. God’s infinite, pure, warm manna—His love. “A story of manna that fills an empty stomach… It was my mother’s dream… to write a story like that someday.” I’d heard that Tohko’s mother wanted to be an author. She had probably whispered again and again to her young daughter in a kind voice. “I want to write a story like manna someday.” Tohko had been telling me about it so excitedly, but her eyes dropped and she fell abruptly silent. The story like manna would never be written now… She must have remembered that. “It was very good,” she murmured quietly. “Take your medicine, too, okay?” “I will.” “You should sleep a little more.” “What are you going to do?” Tohko looked at me anxiously. “I’ll be here until you wake up.” “What about school?” “I already told the teacher I was going to be out.” “… You didn’t sleep last night, did you?” “I’m not sleepy. Don’t worry about me. You just take it easy and get better soon. You still have the test for your top school left, right?” Tohko’s eyes looked tearful and a little troubled. Then she said in spurts, “There’s a futon in the closet… you can use it if you get sleepy. And you can eat whatever’s in the kitchen.” Then she went back to sleep. Which reminded me, I hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday. I hadn’t been hungry at all, so I’d forgotten. I was resistant to rooting through someone else’s kitchen, but when I actually went there and opened the fridge, it was remarkably barren. There was one egg left, still in the pack, whose expiration date was blurred. Other than that, there was only cheese, salami, mayonnaise, mineral water, and canned beer. If Tohko ate books, then what kind of eating habits did Ryuto and Kanako have? I glanced down and saw some instant ramen, some instant fried noodles, and a huge number of disposable chopsticks in a cardboard box. I helped myself to a cup of miso-flavored ramen, filled it with hot water, then ate it. As soon as my stomach was full, I was assaulted by drowsiness. My eyelids felt like they were dropping, but I fought it off and headed back to Tohko’s room. Her eyes were still closed, and she was clinging tightly to the half-eaten copy of Alt Heidelberg in one hand. Something burned inside my nose. Tohko shivered with cold. Her arm was poking out from under the comforter, still clinging to the book, so I knelt down and gently slipped it back under the blankets. Maybe… I should put one more blanket on her. With that thought, I started to open the closet when a chill suddenly went down my back. I’d remembered the scene from Kanako’s novel. After the couple’s funeral, she’d gone to their empty apartment and opened the closet, where she found the rotting body of a baby. What was I thinking?! That was fiction. Tohko was alive, sleeping behind me right now. And yet the chills wouldn’t stop, as if I had been caught in a cold spot; my throat grew dry, and my hand twitched in front of the sliding door. Imagining there was something horrible that I shouldn’t see on the other side of the thin, faded paper door, that as soon as I opened the door it would come out and attack me… Imagining a pale hand would reach out of the muddy darkness, grab my arm, and drag me in… Get a grip. Why are you letting your paranoia get to you? I held my breath, focused my eyes, and pulled the closet door open. Cool air whooshed out and my heart quailed, my skin prickling instantly. The top shelf was piled with blankets and the futon. Boxes full of books were packed off to one side of those and on the lower shelves. It was a totally ordinary closet. And yet the sensation, stroking electrically inside my chest, didn’t go away. I tried to just pull out a blanket and close the door as fast as I could. As it happened, one corner of the blanket caught under some boxes beside it, and when I pulled on it, the boxes came crashing down. “Ack!” I hurried to push them back with my hands, but I couldn’t manage to catch the topmost box and it scattered its contents over the floor. I looked back over my shoulder in a panic, but Tohko was still asleep. She hadn’t noticed. I let out a sigh and set the blanket on the floor, then started picking up everything that had fallen. There were things like a drawing of her parents that Tohko must have made when she was little, erasers shaped like animals, a violet marble, and a musical telegram for her birthday that had been sent from a hospital. All of them seemed to be mementos. There was also a photo album. It had fallen open on the floor. When I picked it up and started to close it, my eyes caught a girl with braids wearing a sailor uniform. She… must have been in middle school. The girl was smiling happily in front of an art museum surrounded by woods. A travel thermos hung across the front of her sailor suit, and she carried a bunch of bags from a souvenir shop in her arms. She had a hair accessory in the shape of a violet over her ear. Was this Yui? Beside her stood a girl with a spare frame. With cold, doll-like eyes, a blue glass pendant hung over her chest, her black hair cut evenly above her shoulders— Could this be Kanako…? I turned to other pages. Almost all of them were plastered with pictures of the two young girls. An old school building, a soccer net, chin-up bars, cherry trees. The girls existed against that backdrop that could be found anywhere, a gymnasium, in sailor uniforms, P.E. uniforms, sweat suits. In every one of the pictures, the girl with the braids was smiling as if she couldn’t help being happy. In contrast, the other girl’s expression was always hard and cold. And yet the girl with the braids didn’t seem bothered by that fact in the slightest. She wound her arm through her friend’s and wore a smile like a flower opening. As I continued paging through the album, I found pictures showing the two of them grown up slightly and wearing two different uniforms. The girl with the braids wore a blazer with a checked, pleated skirt and socks, and the girl with the cold eyes wore a gray dress with a bolero jacket and black tights. Apparently they’d still gotten together all the time, even after they moved on to separate schools. The girl with the braids was as sunny as ever, the other girl dark and cold. Turning further, I found a college campus, a cramped room that looked like a clubroom, and the two girls as college students. Just as you’d expect, the one girl didn’t have braids now but instead hair that cascaded past her shoulders in loose waves; but her smile hadn’t changed. Similar to how the girl beside her had grown up to be more and more beautiful while her eyes held the same frigidity of her girlhood. On the last page, there was a photo of Yui smiling, wearing a pure white wedding dress and handing her bouquet to Kanako, who wore a blue dress. Kanako’s face was a blank, not even smiling. I wondered if royal blue was Kanako’s favorite color. She’d been wearing a dress this color at the party, too… “Kanako and Tohko’s mother, Yui, were dear friends.” Mr. Sasaki’s words surfaced as a troubled, bitter expression came over my face. Had the two of them truly been best friends? Certainly Yui was always at Kanako’s side, but—it felt off. Because there wasn’t even one photo where Kanako was smiling— I started to close the album when I noticed a thin sheet of paper between the last page and the cover and that something was stuck in underneath it. It was several sheets of lined paper that looked like a letter. My eyes ran over them unsuspectingly and I felt a shock. “I wonder if you think things would be better if I were dead.” What the—this was…! I gazed at the candid words written in beautifully prim handwriting, holding my breath. Other words chained together, sharp as arrows. When I debuted, you berated me mercilessly. That I’d used you to get close to him. That I’d used my body to seduce him into reading my book. That it was a betrayal to write a book without telling you. That ugliness is what you’re really like. And yet in front of him, you want to look like you’re a good little girl. Pretending to be worried about me. You’re a truly despicable person. How dare you suggest that I might get hurt if that book gets published. Even though in your heart you were jealous and bitter and couldn’t stand the fact that I was publishing. You wanted to do whatever you could to beat me down. My throat felt dry and sweat beaded on my forehead. Was this… a letter Kanako had sent Yui? But this wasn’t the kind of thing you’d send to a dear friend. You always change your stories around to suit yourself. You’ve been that way since middle school. You didn’t care that you were bothering me when you latched on to me and played it up to everyone as if we were best friends. The truth was that you just wanted to bathe yourself in the sense of superiority you got from being the only one who could talk freely to the girl who was always alone. It was the same when we were in high school, when my parents died. I didn’t ask you to, but you came to the cremation. Did you think I didn’t notice that the whole time you were hugging me and crying, your lips were curved with joy? You were drunk on giving your grieving friend courage even then. It’s the same now. While you act gentle, like some holy mother, you’re always afraid that I might steal your husband from you and you turn spiteful eyes on me from the shadows, making blatant calls to his office or trying to keep him at home using your child as an excuse. You’re so desperate it makes me laugh. “I’m his author.” “Fumiharu told me he wants me to be his author. Just his.” “I can’t put out books like you do, Kanako, but I’m happy anyway.” You talked endlessly, as if to flaunt your happiness. You sent me postcards with family pictures on them. But you need to take a good look at reality. You never had talent. The stories you wrote were just like the dreams Ole Lukøje gave to children with his painted umbrella. Insubstantial and ambiguous, leaving no impression, they disappear the moment morning comes. He understood that and that’s why he wouldn’t let you debut. It’s clear to anyone who looks that Fumiharu Amano’s author isn’t you; it’s me. He’s eaten in front of me. You’re not the only one who’s special. His author is me. You could never be an author. Your stories are inane, dreamy fantasies. So you told me that you have poison. “What would it do to Fumiharu if I poisoned myself? Do you think it would kill him?” What were you trying to ask me? Was that supposed to be a threat? I know where you’re hiding the poison, you know. You always put the things you care about there. And when I opened it up to see, it was exactly as I’d guessed. Once you’ve killed him, are you going to kill me, too? Are you going to poison my food with a smile on your face? It’s pointless. I won’t die. I’m going to survive. I’m not stupid enough to get killed by you. I will never forgive you or your daughter for spoiling the “supremacy” he and I were going to share. By the time I’d finished reading, my body and fingertips were completely frozen. My head throbbed and I couldn’t tear my eyes from the page. The date written at the very end was three days before the Amanos would die. Kanako had written a letter berating Yui. Yui had turned a jealous gaze on Kanako. Both those facts brought on a shock that stabbed into my chest. But what was even more shocking was that Kanako had mentioned that Yui had poison. In The Immoral Passage, it was Arisa who had poisoned the food. But if Yui was the one who’d actually possessed the poison— Had Kanako found it, like it said in her letter, and killed Yui and her husband before Yui could do it? Or… had Yui…? The line “What would it do to Fumiharu if I poisoned myself?” rose up vividly in my mind. A shiver went up my spine and it became even harder to breathe. The police hadn’t been able to uncover any evidence that Kanako had poisoned the Amanos. Kanako hadn’t poisoned them. In which case, Yui must have. When Kanako guessed where Yui was hiding the poison, if Yui had felt cornered and had poisoned her and her husband’s food— If she had chosen to die together rather than hand her husband over to Kanako— The way Yui smiled in the photos, she definitely didn’t seem like the type of person who would do something like that. She seemed like a cute, composed, generous person. But if Yui had actually held dark sentiments toward Kanako, like it said in the letter—but it couldn’t be possible! My hands were shaking. I put the letter back in the album, then put the album back into the box and shut it in the closet. Even after I slid the door closed, the chills wouldn’t stop. I spread the blanket over Tohko, then huddled in a ball in a corner of her room, pulled my jacket over my head, and shut my eyes tightly. I wanted to forget everything from the letter I’d just seen. Just moments ago I’d been unspeakably sleepy, but now my heart was racing, my brain was aching and on fire. How could I possibly sleep?! Had Yui poisoned them? Tohko was breathing peacefully in her sleep. What had Tohko hoped to accomplish by keeping that letter? The darkness closed in on me leadenly. My throat ached. Don’t waste time thinking about it. You have to sleep now. I chanted, Sleep, sleep! as if it were a spell to drive away my demons, and finally I fell into a stinging slumber. I must have been tired. When I woke up, it was after four in the afternoon. Before I’d gone to sleep, I hadn’t had more than my jacket around me, but now I was wrapped up in a heavy quilt. Tohko must have done that. When I twisted around and looked toward where Tohko had been sleeping, she was sitting up in bed with her knees drawn up to her chest under the blankets, reading Alt Heidelberg. She noticed I was awake and her eyes softened and she smiled. “Thank you, Konoha. I’m much better now.” The smile I’d seen on Yui’s face in the photos overlaid itself on Tohko’s and my blood froze. To hide it, I stood up and put a hand on Tohko’s forehead. “You still have a fever. You need to rest.” I thought if I slept I’d be able to forget. But it hadn’t worked. I couldn’t forget a letter like that. Tohko giggled, looking like Yui again. “… You’re like a mom, Konoha.” I flinched and with a rattling, dry voice I asked, “Your mom… and Ryuto’s mom… were friends, right?” Tohko nodded, looking pleased. “Yup. They were in the same class in their second year of middle school, and that’s how they started talking. I heard a bunch of stories about Aunt Kanako from my mom. When she started telling them, she couldn’t stop. She was incredibly proud of Aunt Kanako. She really liked her.” A black whirlpool grew inside my chest. Had Yui truly “really liked” Kanako? Hadn’t her true feelings been something different? Tohko went on telling me about them with an openhearted smile. “I like Aunt Kanako, too. She looks unfriendly, but she’s actually a nice person. She let me live here. She’s really a good person.” Beaming though she was, when she repeated, “She’s… a good person,” so often, it seemed like she was trying to force herself to believe it. The pitch-black whirlpool grew steadily larger as it swirled around. “Shouldn’t you have let Kanako know you were so sick?” Tohko shook her head, keeping her smile in place. “If I told her, she would worry so much. I don’t want to worry her or make her sad. She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, so I always try to smile in front of her.” Wasn’t there something messed up about that? It was bizarre to live in the same house and not be able to tell someone that you’re sick. The words got as far as my throat before they got caught. But the look on Tohko’s face and her tone of voice were sunny—not the slightest cloud obscured them—and I couldn’t help but stay silent. After that, Tohko got a sad look on her face and murmured haltingly, “I wish… my mother were alive… to write me stories… If she were…” I was just about to ask her another question, but she was already smiling brightly. “I’m hungry, Konoha. Let’s get something to eat.” Soon after, I was having a cup of instant noodles. Tohko was having a short story collection by Kunikida Doppo. “ ‘Sorrows of Youth’—I love this short story. Where the man who narrates it exchanges words only once with an unhappy woman he meets in his youth, and then they part ways—that’s all that happens in the brief space of the story, but… it’s pure… and poignant… like plain soup stock with clams and parsley in it, flavored with soy sauce… redolent of a beachside at night…” I recalled a time when Tohko and I had read a Kunikida short story together and my heart filled with melancholy. “In fact, this story has an incredibly beautiful opening line. ‘If the joys of youth are a poem, the sorrows of youth must be, as well.’ ” Just like that other time, Tohko smiled and asked, “Isn’t that wonderful?” “… Yeah.” Was the pain I felt now, that threatened to tear open my heart, the sorrow of youth? Would it fade when I became an adult? Or would it never stop bleeding? Would I still hate someone and curse their name even after I was an adult, like in that letter from Kanako? After we’d finished our late lunch—“I’m fine now, Konoha. Go home.”—Tohko told me kindly, and so I went back home. “You don’t have to walk me out. You should go back to bed.” “I’ll just see you to the front door. It’s fine. I have to lock the door anyway.” “It wasn’t locked when I came over.” “What? That’s odd…” As we chatted like always, my heart ached impossibly and a sense of poignancy welled up inside me. When would we see each other next? We might not ever again. I hunkered down at the front door, sluggishly tying my shoelaces, when the door slid open and a woman wearing a bright blue coat came in. I gasped in surprise. She knit her brows as well. This was the woman who had written the novel. The one where she poisoned a couple she was friends with and strangled their daughter— The letter stuck in the photo album, the things Ryuto had told me, and Tohko’s words poured through my mind in a stream and a seething rage bubbled up in me—I glared at her instinctively. She had her cold, beautiful eyes fixed fully on me, too. It was Tohko’s voice that shattered the tense atmosphere. “Welcome home, Aunt Kanako!” She greeted her with a brilliant smile, as if she was ecstatic beyond words. “Konoha came to see how I was doing. But I just caught a little cold, and I was totally fine. Are you done with work, Aunt Kanako? Oh, a package came for you from the publisher’s. I put it in the living room, so you can take a look at it. Oh, and Aunt Kanako—” Her face icy and expressionless, Kanako removed her slender high heels and came into the house, passing right by me. She went right past Tohko, who was still babbling, too, then slid open a door and disappeared into another room. The door closed with a sharp clack. Tohko was still smiling. “She hasn’t been able to come home for so long because of work. She looks tired. Don’t let it bother you, Konoha.” I looked at Tohko with thoughts that chilled the blood in my heart. “Thank you so much, though, for taking care of me today and yesterday. I’ll see you, Konoha.” Tohko waved at me happily, to which I was finally able to wring out my voice, “… Take care.” Then I left through the front door. Why did Tohko have to smile like that?! A cold wind blew outside. As I moved through the yard, growing dim as the sun set, toward the front gate, I bit back a directionless anger. Had she spent her entire life like that? Being ignored? So then how could she say Kanako was “a good person”?! I couldn’t help getting so upset, but I hadn’t been able to say anything to Tohko or to Kanako. I had just turned my back on the house where they lived and left— I mean, I didn’t have the right. I couldn’t understand Tohko’s feelings, or Kanako’s—not me, who wasn’t capable of living as an author— My chest felt like it would snap with pain. When I noticed Ryuto standing in front of the persimmon tree right next to the gate, my heart stopped. “Did you run into Kanako?” His voice was low. In his grimly tense face, his eyes alone glinted sharply. “Those two… are always like that. Tohko says somethin’ and Kanako ignores her. It’s been that way ever since… Tohko came to stay at our house. I can’t stand to watch it.” He bit down on his lip in apparent pain, then went on. “Back when Tohko was livin’ with her family, she’d start bawlin’ at the littlest things. She’d come home from school cryin’ and Aunt Yui would make her feel better. But she’d act tough in front of me and pout and say, ‘I wasn’t crying!’ Her eyes were red, though, so it was pretty obvious. “I think she’s just got too strong of an imagination, ’cos she was real shy around people, and she’d get scared and go hide when someone she didn’t know came over. And she hated ghosts and scary stories, too. But ever since Tohko came to our house, I never once saw her cry ’cos she was sad. And she’ll go up to anyone and talk to them now. She might be scared to go into a house where someone got dismembered, but she won’t admit it. Plus, she always smiles for Kanako. Do you know why that is?” Ryuto’s eyes, his voice, were colored by fiery anger and pain. “Tohko tried to become Aunt Yui.” To become Yui?! The smile that was so identical to Tohko’s rose again in my mind. Had Tohko kept smiling by constantly recalling the image of her dead mother? Had she been doing her best to act cheerful so that her spirit wouldn’t break? Why? Why go that far? “But no matter how hard she tries to get close to her aunt, there’s one thing Tohko can’t do.” Ryuto fixed his eyes on me. “And that’s write Aunt Yui’s stories. That’s the one thing only the real Aunt Yui could do.” With his penetrating gaze turned on me, a chill went down my spine. What—? What was he trying to say? “It’s impossible—I would have thought,” Ryuto stated flatly. “But she found you. You, who has the capacity to complete the story Aunt Yui could never write.” Kanako had told me, “I know someone who writes novels very similar to yours,” and Tohko had said her mother always talked about wanting to write “a story like manna.” Recalling the way she had told me, on the verge of tears, “I want my mom’s food…,” my brain boiled and my body shook. So Tohko was hoping I would write the novel her mother should have written! That’s what she’d been praying I would write! “If you wrote it, it would save us all… that’s what we thought… me and Tohko both.” I groaned. “It’s not possible! I’m not Tohko’s mother, am I?! I’m a different person. Even if you expect that from me, I can’t do anything about it!” “But all we’re doin’ right now is waitin’ for destruction.” Such a stormy expression came over Ryuto’s face that it made me shudder. “I know that… for a fact. “Everyone’s carryin’ a time bomb inside their hearts and they’re walkin’ on a tightrope right up until they can’t anymore. Exactly like they did nine years ago. Things aren’t gonna settle down unless someone disappears, just like back then.” The darkness increased its hold and loomed over me. Picked out by the faint light of the moon, a brutal smile came over Ryuto’s face. “I know that… ’cos I’m the reincarnation of Takumi Suwa.” I felt a jolt. What was with Ryuto? He wasn’t acting normal. “Do you know who that is? Takumi Suwa? He was a blow-off womanizer, and he was my dad. But when I was still inside Kanako’s belly, he jumped into a road and died. I’m his reincarnation.” My voice was thick with fear. “That’s—” “Crazy? But I have memories from my previous life. How Kanako rejected me, her cold looks, and the moment I jumped at the cars, and how Kanako didn’t come to the hospital, and how I gave that nice lady Yui the poison—I remember all of it.” A chill shot through my spine. Did he say he gave her the poison?! “That’s right, I gave Yui the poison. It was in a little violet-colored bottle the shape of a heart. ’Cos she was always nice to me and I really liked her. I couldn’t just watch her sufferin’. I wanted to help her go to sleep peacefully…” I stood frozen as Ryuto continued his incredible story, the smile still on his face. “Yui’s hands were so pale—they were refined and soft and smooth as a child’s. When I pressed the violet heart into her hands, Yui smiled. To thank me. She was happy. And then she used it. After all, the only way you can hold on to the person you love forever is to either kill yourself or kill them, right?” A knifelike wind stabbed at my face and throat. The things Ryuto had always said— That he was looking for someone who would love him enough to kill him. That he wanted to be loved and despised by a woman like that. Because hatred lasted longer than love— So Yui really had been the one who poisoned them! I couldn’t tell where the boundary between reality and deceit lay, and I braced my feet desperately against the sense that I was being dragged into a dysfunctional space. “You’re just imagining that! How would Takumi ever know whether or not Kanako came to the hospital when he was dying?” “That’s true. But I’ve seen it a bunch of times in my dreams. I see myself dyin’ alone in the hospital… as if my soul had slipped out of my body and I was lookin’ down from the ceilin’. I remember everythin’ from that moment—the panic, the frustration, the despair, the love. I took a perfect image of that stuff with me when I got reborn from Kanako’s belly. I know it’s so that we don’t repeat the same tragedy again.” Ryuto stared at me with a penetrating look, then spoke in a powerful tone of voice. “Please write, Konoha. Before I give Tohko Ole Lukøje’s little violet bottle. You’re the only one who can save us.” He said it almost like it was a curse. “No way. I can’t write.” I spat the words out pointedly, and then I started running. I went through the gate and ran as hard as I could, almost falling over, down the frigid night-bound road. No way! No way! No way! A story like the downy white manna God rained down on his people. Like sustenance from heaven, shining nobly. I wasn’t capable of writing a novel like that. I couldn’t do something as important as save someone by writing. It hurt to breathe! My head hurt as if I’d been punched. My throat was searing hot, and it felt like my beating heart would shred itself! Why did I have to write?! Why were they forcing that role on me?! “Please write, Konoha.” “I wish… my mother were alive… to write me stories.” “You’ve gotta write, Konoha.” “Konoha… you should write a novel someday.” “You’re the only one who can save us.” “When you write your novel, let me read it, okay?” The voices crashed around in my head like a storm. The sharp winter wind cut into my body. “You could never be an author.” “Readers betray authors.” “You should write a novel.” “You should someday, Konoha…” No way! Stop it! I’m not an author! I’m not! I don’t even want to write novels anymore! Exhausted from running, exhausted from thinking, feeling several times that I wanted to just collapse on the ground, I finally reached the front of my house when— I spotted something white at the edge of the tile-capped wall. It was a scarf. With the white scarf I’d given her coiled around her throat, Kotobuki held her schoolbag in both hands and stared ahead worriedly. Kotobuki… what are you—?! Had she been waiting here long? When she saw me, her face cracked and she looked like she was about to cry. “Oh, thank goodness… I found you.” Her small voice set the cold air trembling. Her eyes were filled with tears, and grasping for each word, it took everything Kotobuki had for her to speak. “Inoue… you left so suddenly yesterday… and you were out again today… so I was worried. I’m sorry for coming… Akutagawa told me… that you were in pain, too, so… so I should wait until you found an answer… but you seemed to be suffering so much… I couldn’t just stand around… I’m sorry… I’m sorry.” Then Kotobuki’s eyes went round. “Inoue… why are you crying?” When she asked me that, I realized I was crying. My throat felt like it was going to rip open, my heart was full, my nostrils flared, my eyelids were fluttering, and tears were running down my cheeks in a steady stream. “What’s wrong, Inoue? Did something happen?” Kotobuki ran up to me, and half in tears herself, she wiped the tears from my cheek with a cold hand. Her fingers were freezing when they touched my skin. She’d waited for me long enough that her skin had chilled this much. My forehead wrinkled with suffering. My eyes watered, and she wiped my cheeks again and again. Even so, my throat wouldn’t stop trembling. Sadness welled up in me. “… Everyone’s… telling me to write a novel. Tohko and Ryuto both said I had to… and Mr. Sasaki, he used to be my agent, and he asked if I would write again, too… go back to being Miu Inoue…! But I don’t want to write! But still everyone is—” My voice choked off, sobbing, as I spoke. Kotobuki started crying with me. She stood up on tiptoes, circled her arms around my neck, and squeezed me tight. Kotobuki’s tears wet my neck coldly. “S-so then you don’t need to write. You don’t have to write anymore… I’ll like you even if you don’t write novels… I’ll stay with you.” The hoarse words she spoke to me, her voice catching with sobs, gave me salvation like light shining through cloud cover. The way she had given my spirit courage in an abandoned building lit by candles one winter. Kotobuki had said that I didn’t have to write. That she would be with me and like me even if I didn’t write. She’d spoken with conviction the words I’d been wanting to hear this entire time, at rock bottom as I was. That she liked me when I didn’t write—me, the commoner standing frozen before the narrow gate, the ordinary Konoha Inoue. With straightforward, clumsy words. I was ecstatic and reassured by that—Kotobuki had told me that through tears, and I adored her with all of my heart; she had set me free— I hugged Kotobuki back tightly and continued to let my hot tears fall.