Chapter 204

Chapter 7—To the Person I Love Most Ryuto was taken to the hospital in extremely serious condition and went into emergency surgery. Takeda was sitting on a chair in the lobby, her expression vacant. I tried to talk to her, but she never responded. In the ambulance she’d murmured, “I wanted… to give Ryu the thing he wanted most.” Maki rushed to the hospital and yelled, “How stupid could he be?!” her face twisted. She bit down hard on her lip and irritation and panic showed in her eyes, but she was issuing orders over every last detail to Takamizawa, and she told me to go find Tohko. “Leave this part to me and bring Tohko here! I am not going to let this kid follow Ryuto into suicide, so go now.” Even when Maki said that right in front of her, Takeda didn’t offer the slightest reaction, which gave me a stabbing sense of unease. But I headed for the Sakurai house in a car that belonged to Maki’s family. When I’d called from the hospital, nobody had picked up, but there were lights on in the window. I went as far as the front door; then when I was reaching for the doorbell, the door abruptly slid open and Tohko came out looking harried, carrying a pale violet-colored box in her arms. “Aunt Kanako!” she shouted, and then her face tensed and she became flustered. “I-I’m sorry. I heard a car stop so I thought it was Aunt Kanako… What’s going on, Konoha?” “Takeda stabbed Ryuto and he’s seriously hurt!” When I told her that, her eyes grew wide and the box fell from her hands. It made a thud and sky-blue and rosy scraps of paper scattered out the door, were caught in the wind, and blew around. Were these the letters I’d seen before?! Why were they torn into such tiny pieces? Tohko’s knees buckled. Her face was pale. She picked up one scrap of paper and whispered feebly, “… I have to get Aunt Kanako.” The next instant, she stood up with a look of determination. “Hold on,” she said hurriedly, withdrew inside, and then immediately returned. While we were heading to Kanako’s office in the car, Tohko kept her head bent, brooding. “She might not see me. She might never forgive me. She read the letters…” She wasn’t talking to me. It was as if she was confounded inside herself and suffering. She would look down at the scrap of the letter she clutched in her hand again and again, then bite her lip. I tried to cheer her up by telling her we’d left a message on Kanako’s answering machine, so she might be on her way to the hospital by now, but Tohko shook her head. “No, she won’t go,” she whispered in a hard voice, staring fixedly at her knees. “There’s only ever been one person who’s important to Aunt Kanako. Since that person’s gone, she’s not going to love anyone ever again.” Was that person Fumiharu? “But this time—this time I have to bring her. Otherwise she and Ryuto will be beyond help forever.” As soon as the car stopped in front of the apartment, Tohko opened the door and rushed out. We climbed the stairs, and when she reached the outside of Kanako’s apartment, she plastered herself against the door and rang the bell. “Aunt Kanako, open up! It’s Tohko! I know you’re in there!” There was no response. Tohko’s face twisted in pain; then she pulled a key out of her pocket and put it in the door. A copy? It must have taken guts to use that. Kanako would definitely get upset. Even I could picture it. Even so, Tohko set her jaw, turned the key, and opened the door. She took off her shoes and went deeper inside. I followed after her. I could hear the clack-clack of typing on a keyboard from ahead. Something squeezed tight somewhere around the pit of my stomach, and it became difficult to breathe. Kanako was facing a computer with a chilly expression. Even when Tohko called to her, her slender fingers continued moving, and she didn’t so much as turn her eyes. “I’m sorry I let myself in. Ryuto’s in the hospital. They said he was stabbed in the chest and he’s unconscious. Please—come with us to the hospital!” Tohko shouted desperately. Her staring eyes and her loud voice were both spilling over with gut-wrenching pain. But Kanako faced the screen, her gaze never shifting. Unable to stand it, I yelled, too. “Please, Kanako! Ryuto is really in trouble!” Kanako opened her mouth for the first time. Without shifting her eyes, she informed me coldly, “I have a manuscript I have to finish by tomorrow. You’re bothering me. Go home, Inoue.” She was determined not to hear anything Tohko said. Her staunch, absolute refusal sent a chill down my spine. Even at a time like this, this woman— Tohko stared at Kanako, her face twisted with pain, and she begged, “Aunt Kanako… Ryuto is dying.” “It won’t save him if I go, will it, Inoue? People die when it’s their time, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” What a horrible person! What an absolutely awful person! I didn’t know if the thing welling up in me was anger or fear or despair. “Aunt Kanako, you’re Ryuto’s mother…” “… Ryuto doesn’t think of me as a mother,” Kanako murmured as if to herself, to no one in particular. “You’re wrong! Ryuto has always wanted you to smile at him and hug him!” “… When he was little, that boy was glued to Yui far more than he ever was to me. Even when I was home, he never came near me.” “That’s… that’s because you kept him at a distance! Because you told him he couldn’t even call you mom! So he never got attention from you. But he wanted to call you mom. When he was little, he would tell me, ‘It’s so cool how you can call Aunt Yui mom.’ ” The cold clatter of typing filled the room. Even though the person she was talking to was right in front of her, Tohko’s words rolled off Kanako’s back like she existed in another dimension. She couldn’t even acknowledge her presence. Desperately holding herself up on legs that threatened to fail, Tohko was no longer the book girl who fixed her wise eyes on the truth and gently read out its story; she was just a powerless girl. Sadness surged up in me at how hoarse her voice was. It sounded like it might break. “Ryuto loved his mother more than anyone! He wanted her to love him!” Her voice shot straight into my heart. The person Ryuto loved most. The person at a distance whom he had adored since childhood, whom he could never have. In that instant, I knew who it was! Knew who Maki’s arrogant gaze; who Takeda and Amemiya’s vacant, unseeing faces mirrored; who it was they had resembled—! A stream of words and images streaked through my mind. The photos in the album that had fallen out of the closet, the two girls standing in front of an art museum in the woods, the violet barrette, the cold eyes, Ryuto pointing and saying, “Ole Lukøje’s sleeping powder is up there, the silver dust pouring out like sand.” What Mr. Sasaki had said, what Ryuto had said, what Tohko had said, what we’d heard the nurse at the hospital say— The blood boiled in my body and rose to my head all at once. In the midst of violent dizziness and confusion, the scattered pieces all came together, as if blown into place by a sudden wind. I advanced to stand beside Tohko. “What Tohko’s saying is true. Ryuto loved you more than anyone. He told me that. He said that Tohko’s mother was his first love.” “He meant Yui obviously,” Kanako muttered in exasperation. “No, it was you. You’re Tohko’s real mother!” Kanako looked at me in surprise. Tohko gasped, too. Even I was flabbergasted and confused, and I was the one who’d said it. How could Yui and Tohko not really be mother and child? So then had Tohko received such cruel treatment from her real mother? Had this woman ignored her real daughter? Had Ryuto continued to love her even so? While burning with twisted hatred, obsession, and love? The air became harsh and taut. Fired by a hot wind whirling inside my body, I pressed her. “We visited the hospital in Iwate where Tohko was born. The nurse who saw her said she looked just like her mother. “But Tohko and Yui’s features aren’t that much alike. Even Mr. Sasaki told me that the way they laughed and the impressions they gave off were identical, but he never said a word about them resembling each other physically. The one who resembles Tohko more than Yui is you, Kanako!” Their hairstyles and the vibes they gave off were totally different, so I’d never noticed. But seeing them both up close like this and comparing them—their eyes, their noses, their lips, the whiteness of their skin, and their slender builds were so like the other’s that it would be unnatural for them not to be related. I’d seen in photos that in middle school, Kanako’s black hair had been straight and cut short above her shoulders. If she grew her hair out and put it in braids, she would look even more like Tohko. Kanako was glaring at me with glacial eyes. They made me think I could hear the moan of a blizzard in my ears. “I heard Fumiharu would go home early to take care of Yui before Tohko was born. But the nurse said Yui gave birth alone! So then where was Fumiharu going after work? “He was spending his time at home with Yui after all. You were the one in the hospital!” I declared unequivocally. “You gave birth to Tohko as Yui. There’d been a romantic relationship between you and Fumiharu. Tohko is your and Fumiharu’s daughter! Ryuto realized it, too, seeing your and Tohko’s faces in the same house all the time. He realized that you were Tohko’s mother and Tohko was his sister by blood—” That was all the more reason that Tohko was “special” to Ryuto. Tohko must have known, too. That’s why she’d gone to the hospital to confirm it. No matter how she was treated, she couldn’t hate Kanako. Tohko listened to me speak with a frail look on her face. How must it have felt to be continually treated as a “nonexistent child” by her real mother? How had she dealt with that despair? Just imagining it made my chest constrict. Kanako spoke in a sharp voice. “You think I took on the part of Yui to give birth? Why would I need to do something so convoluted as that?” Her gaze as she stared at me was like needles of ice. They lanced into me. My mind was taken up by the transformation in Kanako’s expression. “… The fact that Yui was pregnant is established from Mr. Sasaki’s statements. So then where did Yui’s baby disappear to? In The Immoral Passage, your counterpart Arisa strangles the baby Toco. After Haru and Yuiko’s deaths, Arisa finds only a doll and Toco’s corpse at their apartment— “But you can’t actually hide a baby’s body. So then maybe the baby was never born? Maybe Yui had a miscarriage.” Kanako’s face was taut. I fixed my gaze even more directly on her. “The child who should have been named Tohko no longer existed. That’s why you gave your child the name Tohko and gave her to Yui. In order to save Yui—” Kanako gritted her teeth and I saw her eyes flash with loathing, and I felt sure that what I was imagining was right. The reason Fumiharu had hurried home was not to care for his wife who was close to giving birth, but instead because he couldn’t leave his wife’s side after her miscarriage. Yui had probably been in no condition to be left unsupervised. And perhaps Kanako had also been the cause of Yui’s miscarriage— “Ridiculous. I hated Yui!” Kanako shouted, spitting the words out. Tohko’s face crumpled as if she’d been hurt by that, and she clutched her skirt tightly in both hands. My spirit wavered for a moment, too. The wall that stood in front of Kanako was high and forbidding, and it wasn’t going to be broken down easily. I could see the answer, but I couldn’t communicate it to her. Everything was rejected. Even the words I unleashed were repelled by a cold blade. But seeing Tohko with her head bowed, looking on the verge of tears, I thought, I’ve got to do this. Tohko had experienced this pain for a long time. I had to break her chains of sorrow here and now. I would drag the truth out of Kanako. I cut into Kanako straight on. “That’s a lie. You’re a liar, Kanako!” Tohko’s shoulders quivered, and she looked up at me. Kanako’s gaze burned with rage. If I was the way I used to be, I would have quailed at such harsh eyes and faltered. But the fear I’d felt toward her up until now had blown away in that instant. My brain burned. The inside of my chest was thrumming. “Since it looks like you can’t talk to Tohko, I’ll make you talk to me instead.” My words were nothing more than the playacting of a child. Even so, I had to get it across. To this author of ice. Right now, me, with my words! “I read your book. It was a story I never could have written. “They say you and the Amanos were the models for it. But you mixed in some author’s liberties and completely altered the truth. In the story, Arisa feels that Yuiko’s husband, Haru, has a kindred consciousness, and she becomes obsessed. Saying they share the goal of the supreme novel. Because of that, she thinks Yuiko and Toco are obstacles and she hates them. Yuiko is jealous of Arisa, too. But the reality was different.” Kanako’s expression changed from fire to ice. Her eyes were bitingly cold and their pupils were vacant. “No, it wasn’t. She would be beaming on the surface anytime at all, but underneath that she was ugly and jealous. And yet she pretended to be a good girl and clung to me and it was miserable.” I asked her, “Really?” Though I donned a calm air, my heart was uneasy and my gut hurt, as if it was twisting into knots. How could I knock the walls down? Could I expose the truth within? Could I change the dark, sad story into a story of love and kindness the way the clear-eyed book girl had shown me up till now? Tohko stared at me with an intense gaze, as if she was praying for something. Tohko had told the stories for me on a sunny day at the beginning of summer, in a church in the middle of the night, at a shadowy estate, on a stage with crowds of people watching, on the floor of a moonlit factory, below a starry sky twinkling with stars. Her long braids swaying, gazing at whomever she faced without fear, a smile on her face— The sight of her came up vividly on the insides of my eyelids. I sucked in a breath and calmed my heart. All right. It was going to start here. “In Immoral Passage you have Arisa say that Yuiko is Juliette married to Jerome. Haru is Jerome and she’s Alissa. “Gide’s Strait Is the Gate is the story of Jerome dedicating his heart to Alissa and of Alissa, who rejects his love and passes through the gate that leads to God. Juliette has love for Jerome, but her feelings aren’t reciprocated. In Jerome’s story, Juliette is nothing more than a supporting character. Jerome’s gaze is turned exclusively on Alissa. But what were things like from Alissa’s perspective?” It was what Tohko always said. There isn’t one way to read a story. As many characters as there are, there are that many different stories. “That’s why I try to read stories over again with the feelings of different characters. Because when I do that, it gives birth to new stories.” “When I notice something I never noticed before, it feels like discovering treasure.” In the soft, golden light, Tohko, sitting on a fold-up chair with her feet pulled up, turning the pages of a book propped on her knees, telling a story in a clear voice. No, the story I was about to tell wasn’t Jerome’s story. It was the story of Alissa and Juliette. “—Alissa and Juliette were sisters, but they were total opposites. Quiet, devout Alissa and cheerful, flippant Juliette. If Alissa was holiness, Juliette was worldliness—but actually, Juliette was also a wise girl deeply intimate with poetry and music. Juliette withdrew from Jerome for Alissa’s sake and became the wife of a man who asked for her hand. Meanwhile, Alissa knew how Juliette felt and she, too, refused Jerome’s proposal. The two of them were sisters who were dear friends and considerate of each other that way.”