Tohko had told me that Kanako and Yui had been best friends since middle school. There had been photos of the two of them in that album that had fallen out of the closet, too. They were constantly together. Yui smiling, Kanako with a cold gaze— Kanako had said that Yui was an annoyance. That she’d hated Yui. But then why had she stayed with her? Why, even after they went on to separate high schools and then out into the world, had she continued to be at her side? Shouldn’t Kanako have been able to cut her ties with Yui, since she didn’t fear being alone? So then why didn’t she? “The sisters’ relationship starts to change with Juliette’s wedding. At first it was a loveless marriage. But over the years, she becomes attached to her husband, adapted to her husband, and stops playing piano and reading. Alissa disapproves of that and writes a letter to Jerome. She suggests that Juliette is only putting on a play of being happy and asks whether in doing so she might have started to honestly feel that way—” “As it happens, the thing making my little sister happy is something very different from what she once thought about and different again from what we thought her happiness would attach to.” “… Ah, why does the thing we call ‘happiness’ have such a deep link to the soul? And how valueless are the many things which seem from without to give it shape?” “When Juliette was nearly ready to give birth and Alissa went to visit her, Alissa was overtaken by an inscrutable gloom and she couldn’t be at ease. Could it be that Alissa was saddened at how her little sister had been changed by marriage? Feeling as if the sister who’d been in the same world as her had gone off to another realm? “In Jerome’s perspective, not much is written about the details of Alissa and Juliette’s day-to-day lives. But we can imagine that for the shy Alissa, Juliette, the sister who shared her blood and was always nearby, was someone that she could allow into her heart. Reading books and sharing their impressions of them, Alissa listening to Juliette playing the piano, exchanging gifts on Christmas or birthdays, occasionally talking about the future—they might have spent their time like close friends.” Kanako was looking at her computer screen with a gaze as silent and frozen as the midwinter sky. Not even her eyelashes or fingertips made the slightest movement. I wove my words together. “They say the inspiration for Alissa was Gide’s wife, Madeleine. She was his cousin, two years older than him, and she resembles Alissa in a lot of respects, but she was a woman who was not exactly Alissa. Are you familiar with the diary Gide wrote about his married life with her, Kanako?” Her face still turned away in a profile as beautiful and sculpted as a statue, I posed this question to her. Gide’s hidden diary, which I’d read at the library. What was written in it was the thorny conflict of Gide’s soul over the fact that he loved Madeleine but couldn’t be one with her physically. “Gide was gay and he couldn’t love his wife physically, so their marriage was a ‘chaste union.’ While Gide was on a trip with someone he was having an affair with, Madeleine burned all his letters and they had a misunderstanding. Even so, even after her death, Gide continued his pursuit to understand Madeleine. “Women who resemble her appear repeatedly in his writings. Madeleine is the wellspring of Gide’s creativity. She was an irreplaceable presence.” Kanako maintained her silence, her lips pressed together, and so I crisply declared, “You and Yui were Alissa and Juliette! And at the same time, you were Gide and Madeleine!” Kanako still didn’t move. Her heart was shut tight, sealing her words in. That was how she waited for her opponents to wear themselves out, to lose heart and go away. Did she think I was going to give up? “Kanako, you felt as if Juliette pulled away from you when she got married, and it made you feel lonely, didn’t it? “I heard that you would constantly summon Fumiharu to your office on days off. They said your relationship with him was a ‘chaste union.’ I’m sure there was a powerful bond between you, the author, and Fumiharu, the editor. Fumiharu was also the one who discovered you and sent your maiden novel out into the world. “But the one you truly loved wasn’t Fumiharu; it was Yui, wasn’t it? And you called Fumiharu to your office in order to make him jealous, not Yui, and to pull the two of them apart.” Why had she stayed at her side even after their schools and positions had changed? Had she been that obsessed? The suffocating atmosphere drew out for a long time. Kanako still wasn’t breaking. My hands were sweaty. “When I came here the other day, you had a lot of photos on your desk. There was also a flower-patterned teacup, a strawberry tart, purple spoon rests… “Somehow, it didn’t fit your image and it stuck with me.” I stole a glance at the simple black mug on her desk. “You’re not using that cup today?” Kanako, who’d kept her mouth pressed shut, finally said something. “… People can change what cups they use depending on their moods. They can also get a sudden craving for something sweet.” “The photos on your desk that day were all of scenery—where were they taken?” “… They’re just background material that editing put together for me.” “But I felt like I’d seen that scenery somewhere before. Especially that art museum surrounded by woods.” I said it slowly. “That’s somewhere you and Yui visited on your middle school trip, right?” Kanako didn’t answer. “The other pictures of schools and streets probably have some link to Yui, too. I saw the same buildings and scenery in Yui’s photo album, so that’s why I had a feeling I’d seen them before.” Surprised, Tohko asked, “How do you know about my mom’s photo album, Konoha?” Starting to feel awkward, I apologized. “I’m sorry. When I took a blanket out of the closet, the album fell out. I didn’t mean to look at it, but… I just happened to see it.” “… I didn’t know that,” Tohko murmured, her eyes swimming around as if there was still something on her mind. Just then, Kanako’s voice overlaid itself on ours coldly. “All schools look alike. Besides, what’s so strange about having photos of famous tourist spots as background material?” My face tensed. “That’s true. If it was just the fact that you had those photos, there wouldn’t be anything strange about it. But there’s something else I noticed.” Kanako glared at me penetratingly as I stepped closer to her. I stopped right in front of her desk and tapped my finger lightly on it, right next to the black mug. It made a hollow sound. “You had a spoon here before, right?” A slight crimson was coursing through her cheeks, which had been as pale as ice. I didn’t turn my gaze from it. “You had a silver teaspoon and a purple spoon rest shaped like a heart.” Kanako pressed her lips together firmly and looked away. “In the picture at the art museum, you were wearing a blue glass pendant. And Yui had a barrette shaped like a violet in her hair. Its petals had the same shape as your spoon rest. Did that used to be Yui’s barrette?” “Mom’s… barrette!” Tohko shrieked quietly. Then she began talking in a daze. “I knew it! Mom had a barrette shaped like a violet. Aunt Kanako gave it to her, and it was really important to her!” Fierce irritation and panic came into Kanako’s eyes. Though my chest burned at the reaction I’d finally managed to drag out, I pursued her even further. “Maybe I’m mistaken. Could you show me that spoon rest again? We can have Tohko confirm whether or not it’s her mom’s barrette, too.” “Why is there any reason for me to do that?!” Kanako’s voice was wild at last, and she fixed a glare on me. I raised my voice, too. “If you can’t show us, that’s the same as admitting it’s Yui’s barrette! You went out of your way to make it into a memento of Yui and kept it all this time! You took it out on the anniversary of Yui’s death and with photos of your memories with Yui—maybe even the cup and cake Yui used to like—you grieved Yui’s death! You were wearing black that day! You meant it to be for mourning!” Kanako banged both hands down on the desk. “Get out of here! You’re wasting my time forcing me to listen to your ridiculous theories!” “Theories! No, this is only what I imagine. But it’s affecting you. You can’t answer why you kept such precious hold on a keepsake of Yui when you’re supposed to hate her! Making something that touched another person’s hair into a spoon rest isn’t normal! You’d have to have some especially strong feelings for that person!” “Get out!” “No! You loved Yui more than as a best friend. The one you were in a chaste union with was Yui, not Fumiharu! The way Gide loved Madeleine! Yui was someone you absolutely couldn’t do without in your life! And Yui was—” “Yui hated me!!” Kanako stood up with a clatter and shouted, as if beating us with her naked emotions. The eyes glaring at me were less like ice and more a fiercely burning fire. Flames scattering bright red sparks and spreading out endlessly! Hidden beneath a mask of ice, her true nature, its intensity—its insanity—was overwhelming. “That’s right! Yui was jealous of me! She was always watching me, nervous that I might take Amano from her! In the end, she took poison and killed herself!!” How much pain, screaming, hatred, love, and despair had this woman kept locked in her heart? Ryuto had spoken painfully of how his first love was someone who couldn’t be happy. “She got betrayed in a way that could never be taken back, by someone she trusted. She fell into a black, lonely darkness… and it ate away at her heart.” The greatest betrayal for Kanako was that Yui chose death. Even now, Kanako thought Yui was the one who had used the poison. But it was— I started to open my mouth, but then Tohko shouted beside me. “You’re wrong! You’re wrong, Aunt Kanako! My mom didn’t use the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje!” Tohko was shaking. She shouted, her hands balled up, her eyes narrowed in pain, her face pale, as if she was speaking words that tortured her. “—My mom would never use it… She didn’t use it! She wasn’t the one who added the poison. She wasn’t capable of that. And anyway, the one who made the coffee was—that morning, the one who added the poison was—” “The one who put the poison in the coffee was Ryuto.” Tohko looked up at me as if she’d been shot. Kanako was gaping, too. No wonder. These last nine years, the two of them had each thought someone different added the poison, and they’d suffered because of it. “… Everything was an unfortunate misunderstanding.” The act on that morning nine years ago—feeling a pain in my chest that almost seared the flesh, I began to tell the story. “The morning the accident happened, apparently Tohko and Fumiharu ate a story that Yui wrote for them. You’re aware that Fumiharu ate books and that his daughter, Tohko, inherited that trait from him. That day, Fumiharu didn’t eat any normal food, but he shared some coffee with Yui. Fumiharu had brewed it.” Kanako took a breath. She had probably realized that no one but Fumiharu could have added the poison in that situation. I’d thought so, too, at first. I’m sure Tohko had as well— “… You said Ryuto added the poison, Inoue,” Kanako murmured in a puzzled voice. “Yes, I did. Ryuto was the one who mixed the poison into the coffee Fumiharu brewed.” “Why, Konoha? Why do you think that?” “… Because I’ve heard Ryuto talk about his memories from his previous life.” Even more intense confusion came over both of their faces. I told them how Ryuto had said he was the reincarnation of Takumi Suwa. Why had Ryuto convinced himself of that? Because he had “memories of his past life.” Memories of getting hit by a car to protect a cat, being taken to the hospital, and dying alone. Memories of giving Yui, who’d always been kind to him, the purple vial that held the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje. Memories of Yui pouring it into the coffee. Ryuto “remembered” things that he should have had no way of knowing, as if his soul could traverse time and place freely. “But were those things that Ryuto had truly experienced as Takumi Suwa? “Maybe it was only that his memories of the accident were things he heard from the people around him when he was little and they stuck in his mind and felt like memories from his past life. “You could also imagine that the reason he called Tohko’s mother ‘Yui’ was because Yui told him, ‘Your dad used to call me Yui.’ “So then what about his memories of the violet heart-shaped bottle? “Is it possible that Ryuto might have actually seen it? And then with a child’s curiosity, he might have picked it up—” Tohko suddenly put both hands to her mouth, and in a quavering voice, she whispered, “I-I told him about it! How I saw my mom resting a violet heart-shaped bottle in her palm late at night and staring at it. How I told her it was pretty, and she said it was the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje, but that if little girls had any of it, they would get carried away to the land of eternal sleep, so I should never touch it…” Tohko was utterly pale and looked as if she might collapse at any moment. A profound despair was in her eyes. “I-I told him. I was trying to act like a big sister… I told him about how mom had the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje and how the key to the jewelry box with the bottle in it was hidden on the top shelf of her bookcase. I was scared, so all I did was look up at the shelves, but Ryuto—maybe he got a chair and peeked at it—he might have gotten the key and opened the jewelry box—” “Someone points at a shelf—and they tell me.” “The sleepin’ powder of Ole Lukøje is up there—” The voice Ryuto had heard. It had belonged to Tohko. The finger pointing at the shelf had been hers, too. “I-I told him, which means…” It was painfully clear just how much Tohko blamed herself. I felt as if my chest would tear open also. But for Ryuto’s sake, I had to reveal the truth. “Ryuto was wearing a red sweater the morning of the accident, right?” Tohko replied, forcing her voice out, “… Yes.” I thought so—a breath like a sigh escaped my lips. “Ryuto told me that when Yui poured the poison out, her hand was white and silky, the sleeve of her sweater was dyed red like blood, and the poison cascaded down from it. That was Ryuto’s own hand. I know that because Yui and Fumiharu had both dressed up to go to the wedding. Neither of them would be wearing a sweater.” The Christmas photo had probably shown Ryuto in a red sweater. When he saw that, Ryuto had realized, too. That the hand pouring out the poison had been his own— “He must have gotten up on a chair or something in the moment that Fumiharu took his eyes off him and put the poison into their coffee. The night before, Yui had had a fight with Fumiharu, and she’d seemed tired the next morning. If she had a fun dream, maybe she would cheer up. Maybe that’s how he thought of it.” And then that memory had turned into a memory from Takumi Suwa, and the one who brewed the coffee changed from Fumiharu to Yui, and Ryuto convinced himself that Yui was the one who’d added the poison. That Takumi had given her the poison in order to save her from her suffering. And yet after he’d seen the photo album and learned that wasn’t true, he searched the drawers and found the empty bottle— And then he’d been so crushed that he tried walking into death. Maybe the reason Ryuto believed he was a reincarnation was so that he could transfer the crime he’d committed onto Takumi and try to forget about it. That unconscious panic might have provoked him into all the violent acts he’d committed up till now. Kanako, too, wore a flabbergasted look as she murmured, “Yui talked about Ole Lukøje’s poison. At the time it sounded like a snide remark directed at me, but… when I heard that they’d been in an accident under unusual circumstances, I thought Yui really had had poison and that she really had used it. I never thought Ryuto…” Her hands still firmly clasped together, Tohko’s head drooped. Kanako’s expression was bleak and heavy, too. “Yui didn’t commit suicide because she was afraid you were going to steal Fumiharu from her. And she didn’t do it because she hated you, either.” Kanako looked at me. The transformation of her rage filled her eyes with sorrow that had no outlet, and she murmured, reproachful, “How do you know that?” “Because Tohko told me about the story like manna that Yui dreamed of writing someday.” Tohko looked at me frailly. “She said that Yui always talked about it… a sweet, pure story that would fill an empty stomach like the white sustenance God rained down from heaven. Tohko and Fumiharu were both filled up by the meals Yui wrote for them. The empty one was you, Kanako. Yui wished she could write a story for you.” Kanako moaned. “That’s just some imagination you’re trotting out.” “Yes, that’s true. But Tohko and Ryuto both tried to make me write that novel. Since something I wrote was like Yui’s stories, they tried to make me write in Yui’s place. Ryuto wasn’t choosy about his methods. He even tried to commit a crime. For your sake, he was desperate.” I remembered Ryuto crying outside the gate of my house and a digging pain ran through me. I couldn’t forgive Ryuto for his actions. But he’d been suffering, too. He’d wanted to rescue someone important to him. Kanako let out a mournful scream. “But you won’t write ever again! You quit being an author! Yui did, too; once she married Amano, she threw away her dream of being an author! She never showed me anything ever again. Everything Yui wrote belonged to Amano after that! I was Yui’s reader until she met Amano! She found a new reader, and she didn’t need me anymore!” The cascade of feelings that had lost any other outlet came at me with a groan. The walls had broken down; the penned-in emotions surged up and raged. At last Kanako was speaking fragments of truth. For nine whole years—no, ever since Yui and Fumiharu met, Kanako had held the pain of being betrayed in her heart. Her face twisted fiercely and she cried out unselfconsciously. It mirrored the way I’d acted when I learned of Tohko’s lies and mirrored the way Miu had reproached me in the blizzard on the roof. At last, I understood. Kanako was a reader betrayed by her author. That’s why she’d become an author and taken her revenge. No story would ever be told for her again. All she could do was tell it herself. All she could do was continue writing to assuage her hunger— “I never liked the novels Yui wrote in the first place. She started clinging to me obnoxiously in middle school and posing as my best friend—saying things like she wished we could be together forever, without even a hint of shame. Making me read the sloppy stories she’d written— “She’d told me that she loved me more than anyone, and yet the day when she first brought a manuscript to Amano, she purposely came to my house, her face bright red, and exhausted me with stories of how great he was. After that, every time she saw me all she talked about was Amano! “She used the excuse of having him look at a manuscript, but all she wanted was to see him. “He was the same way! There was no commercial value whatsoever in the fluffy fairy tales Yui wrote, and yet he kept seeing her. Yui was his goal all along!” Kanako’s eyes flashed with hatred. The rawness of it took my voice away. It was like a storm howling in the room. “He told Yui he wanted her to become his author exclusively, and yet I would be writing something while beside me that man would kick back and eat Ogai Mori or Tolstoy. He didn’t tell Yui that he was seeing me. And yet she married him and even got pregnant. She told me about it ecstatically. She was flaunting her happiness at me!” “… And because you couldn’t forgive her for that, you committed an indiscretion with Fumiharu.” Kanako’s lips twisted into a smirk. The way they had when she told me the address of the temple where Yui’s grave was. The way they had when she’d muttered that she wished Tohko would never come back. With a look that held intense hatred. “No. I wanted to teach Yui a lesson. That the happiness she treasured so much was just like the stories she wrote—nothing more than a phantom. That her husband was the worst kind of man, one who’d had an affair with another woman while his wife was pregnant.” Tohko lowered her eyes, looking like she was on the verge of tears. I recalled how she had told stories about her parents with a smile, and I, too, felt it grow difficult to breathe. In the picture, Fumiharu and Yui had looked so happy together, though. Why had Fumiharu transgressed with Kanako? “I was at the Kanazawa Hotel to get material, and when I called Amano there, he left Yui and came running. “I asked him, am I your author or is Yui? “I told him that if he went back to Yui that night, I would never write again.” Was Kanako the author for Fumiharu Amano, or was it Yui? One was Fumiharu’s embodiment of the ideal; the other was indispensable everyday life. Which of the two opposite women did Fumiharu love more deeply? “Amano didn’t go home. ‘If it will feed your writing…’ He smiled and then betrayed Yui.” What kind of smile had Fumiharu worn that night? A bitter smile? A gentle smile? A melancholy smile? A smile of resolve? A smile of despair? Then Kanako’s voice grew slightly quieter, and I saw her eyes were lowered. I thought revenge might not be the only reason Kanako had had a romantic relationship with Fumiharu. I didn’t know if it was what you would call love between most men and women. I was pretty sure it wasn’t. Even so, hadn’t there been a bond between Kanako the author and Fumiharu the editor that couldn’t be measured by sensibility? Fumiharu was the man she loathed who’d taken her beloved best friend from her, but at the same time he understood her better than anyone. “If it will feed your writing…” With what emotions had Fumiharu said those words? With what emotions had Kanako heard him? And with what thoughts had Yui waited for Fumiharu to return? The hatred faded from Kanako’s eyes and a heartbreaking sorrow came into them. “… That was the night Yui miscarried. And she fled into an imaginary world. “She was convinced the child she’d lost was still inside her. She would say such things… ‘If we have a girl, we’re going to name her Tohko after The Legends of Tono… Oh, why can’t she be born soon?’ All while stroking her belly joyously.” Yui, her heart broken by the loss of the baby she should have had. How deeply had Kanako tasted of despair and regret, seeing her best friend talking so happily? Tohko looked closer to tears than ever and clutched at her skirt. Ironically, in place of the life that was lost, Kanako had fostered a new life inside her. “I had no need of a child. Something like that would only get in the way. So I foisted it off on Yui. Yui believed she’d given birth to it herself.” The words she spat out were colored by a pinching sadness. Kanako turned her eyes away, as if afraid of letting us see into her heart. It made her look small and frail. “Yui’s spirit was weak. She couldn’t deal with the harshness of reality. She rewrote reality and went on with her life in a happy dream world. Fearing meanwhile that her dream would shatter… “The books she wrote were like that, too, that child. Sweet and pretty, overflowing with a sense of goodness, with only good people in them and not at all realistic.” As Kanako continued whispering brokenly, like cold rain falling, Tohko watched her without a sound. The person who was her birth mother and also the best friend of the mother who raised her— Aunt Kanako is a good, kind person. Tohko had said that to me cheerfully, and now— Her eyes were wet, as if she was more concerned about Kanako’s pain than her own. And so I spoke up. “But you loved those stories of Yui’s, didn’t you? That’s why you couldn’t forgive her for not letting you read them anymore and why you felt betrayed.” Love and hatred were separated by the space of a single sheet of paper. Ryuto had said it all the time, too: you can hate someone because you love them. You can keep loving someone because you hate them. Because hatred lasts longer and more powerfully than love. All along Ryuto’s eyes had been on Kanako, who loved Yui despite her hatred. Burning for that almost crazed obsession to be directed onto him. “I won’t be confused by your lies anymore,” I told Kanako with feelings that made my heart tremble. “You’re the one who never tried to see the truth and rewrote reality, Kanako.” Kanako fixed her gaze on me with irritation. I looked right back into it. “If you’re saying you didn’t want a child and that’s why you pushed her off on Yui, then why did you bother giving birth with Yui’s name? Even now you’re pretending that you don’t still love Yui. The way you wrote in The Immoral Passage, where there was nothing but hatred between Arisa and Yuiko. “And that’s not all. You even forged a letter to make people think that Yui was a two-faced, mean-spirited woman that was jealous of you.” Tohko caught her breath with a gasp. “Konoha, you… read that letter?” “I’m sorry.” When I’d apologized for looking at the photos in the album, Tohko must have suspected as much. An ambiguous expression came over her face—not terribly surprised, just troubled. On the other hand, Kanako had apparently also figured out which letter I’d read. Her gaze became that much harsher. “The date on the letter was three days before the accident. But that was a lie you created. You wrote that letter after Yui and Fumiharu had died.” “What proof do you have for saying something like that? I can tell you Yui sent me that letter before she died. Because I couldn’t stand her hiding her jealousy of me and smiling so congenially at me.” “Are you lying again? In the letter, you mentioned that Yui secretly had poison. As if you had found out where it was hidden and seen it for yourself. As if you were using it to threaten Yui. ‘Are you going to put it in my food?’ you’d ask smirkingly. But!” I shouted sharply. The scene Ryuto had described rose into my mind accompanied by a smoldering heat. The black coffee swirling in a vortex. The silver grains pouring in smoothly. “You might have known that Yui had the poison. But you didn’t know what form it was in. Isn’t that right? Otherwise you never would have written that she was going to ‘poison my food.’ People usually use liquids for that.” Kanako’s face tensed. “The fairy of sleep, old man Ole Lukøje who drips milk into children’s eyes to make them sleep. You heard Yui talk about Ole Lukøje and got the impression that the poison was a liquid. But it was actually powder! Tohko talked about how her mother had sleeping powder. Why would you go to the trouble of writing in the letter about poison you had never seen, but pretend that you had seen it? Don’t you think that’s strange?” As Kanako glowered at me with flashing eyes, her lips trembled ever so slightly. But they produced no response. I turned to Tohko and asked, “Where was the letter, Tohko?” Tohko probably knew, too. She answered quietly, her face sad, “It was stuck inside my mom’s photo album.” “How old were you when you read it?” “… After they died, we were going through their things. I read it then…” I turned back to Kanako. “You put it into the photo album on purpose to make Tohko read it. “When Madeleine burned all of Gide’s letters and threw them out, Gide despaired that he’d lost the best parts of himself, but for you it was the opposite. You hid the best parts and put the worst parts into a letter and exposed them!” “That’s enough!” Kanako shouted. “What possible benefit would there be in me doing something like that?!” “You had to do it in order to protect your heart. Because you’d committed a sin against your beloved best friend.” “A sin?” “Yes, because you’re the one who killed Yui—” At that, Kanako sucked in a breath. Her eyes opened wide and she looked astounded. “At least, that’s what you thought. That you had cornered Yui and driven her to her death. Every time Yui turned an uneasy look on you, you couldn’t help but remember your sin—the sin of your indiscretion with Yui’s husband, Fumiharu—the sin of causing Yui’s child to die.” Maybe she’d been with Takumi Suwa and had Ryuto in order to reassure Yui. I have no intention of stealing your husband or child. Maybe she wanted to show Yui that she had a lover and a child of her own. The young man who consorted with countless women, the plaything, had been to cover her tracks, a convenient match for Kanako. When I thought of how Ryuto must have felt, still caring for Kanako as he did, it was as if my chest were being carved out. But when I considered that Kanako could have atoned for her sin in no other way, my heart hurt even more. What a lonely, awkward woman she was. Kanako was lacking somehow as a person. I was sure Yui was the one who had filled in that empty spot. “Immoral Passage was the confession of your sin and the short story sequel was your wish. The doll Toco grows up and kills Arisa. You thought Toco had to hate her, didn’t you?” Kanako fixed flaming eyes on me. Tohko was watching over us worriedly. I continued speaking. “There was no way you could have loved Tohko! Because she was the proof that you had betrayed your best friend—your beloved Madeleine. So you ignored her, kept her at a distance, and wrote that letter trying to make her hate you! You treated Tohko like a nonexistent child! And then you kept yourself alone and went through the narrow gate! Yui wasn’t the weak-spirited one—it was you!” Kanako was shaking with anger. Her eyes were bloodshot, she was grinding her teeth, and her shoulders were rising and falling as if she had trouble breathing. Her face was crumbling bit by bit. She began to look crestfallen, her eyes tearing up, transforming into a picture of sorrow. I was sure that what I had said wasn’t the whole story. People’s hearts were complex and chaotic, and love and hatred got muddled together and there was no showing the shape of it clearly. Why had Kanako kept Tohko close at hand? Why had she ignored her? Because she loved her or because she hated her? Kanako herself probably didn’t even know the truth. If she was nearby, even if it was more painful than words could say, at least she wouldn’t be able to go away. So Kanako tried to hate her. Tried to be hated. Hating, hating, being hated, being hated—even so, their tie by blood was one thing she couldn’t deny. The same blood as hers was unquestionably flowing inside the young girl in front of her. Her eyes, her lips, the lines of her face proved that. And yet her smile and mannerisms were exactly like those of the person she loved, whom she had no hope of ever seeing again. She spoke to her with the same inflections and gave her the same smile. No matter how she pushed and pushed at her, her eyes were fixed on Kanako unflaggingly and she brought her love. Exactly the way she was when I met her— For Kanako, it had been the torment of hell. Being loved by a person she couldn’t be allowed to love and trying never to love her. Kanako had been suffering so much since losing Yui that she couldn’t stop herself from rewriting reality completely. She had been crushed, like Gide when he lost Madeleine. “Everything has faded and lost its luster.” “I no longer know for what reason I would go on living…” Kanako’s irreplaceable Madeleine. Something joyous and torturous. She had loved her, had hated her that much. Kanako dug the fingers of one hand into her bangs and whispered in a ragged, exhausted voice, “Get out of here! Let me be alone! Get away from me.” “… Are you running away?” I asked quietly, and she looked at me with a faintly bitter face. “Are you saying you didn’t run away, Miss Miu Inoue?” A sharp shot went through my chest. “Your writing… is very similar to Yui’s. You only see nice things. You’re blind to people’s evil intentions and only believe in good. You love superficial words like dreams and hope and trust and thoughtfulness, and you write endlessly about things that make you feel good, and that’s it. The only reason you won the prize is because your fourteen-year-old feelings and writing style just happened to match the theme and it gave a better effect than we’d anticipated. That story… was like a miracle. But even if you could win the prize, you’re not the type that could be an author. Just like Yui. Quivering in the face of ugly reality, unable to look at the darkness in the soul, you break. You flee into a happy dream.” “You could never be an author.” I remembered being told that frigidly in the hotel lobby. I have no intention of being an author. I’m not going to be an author! The way I’d desperately defended myself in my heart while standing perfectly still and silent. How I had felt an almost dizzying sense of dread for her, whom everyone acknowledged as an author. I was no match for her. Before this person, I could only lower my head and shrink in on myself. But it was different now. “Like you said, I’ve done nothing but run this whole time. From becoming an author and from other people.” I’d tortured Miu, not realizing her true feelings. After Miu jumped off the roof, I secluded myself in my room and swore, weeping, that I would never write another novel. Even after starting high school, I’d been a cowardly child who had thought only of crafting an exterior and living in peace. “But now there’s something I want to tell you, the author, and I’m not going to run. “The novel you wrote is so perfected that my novel doesn’t even compare to it. The style and composition were both incredible. But I can’t sympathize with the main character Arisa. It’s the same with you.” I looked Kanako in the eyes and told her my honest feelings. I could feel Tohko’s gaze on my cheek. “You’re like Alissa when she left Jerome, thinking that there’s only one path. “Nothing but the path that leads to supremacy means anything, and naive authors who rely on family or friends can’t survive. Isn’t that a narrow view? Alissa’s noble self-seclusion was haughty and pure. But it was also something selfish that didn’t consider Jerome’s feelings. Do you intend to cast aside your family and the people who care about you and go through the narrow gate all alone?” Kanako answered coldly, “I can’t change the way I live. I’ve walked alone this far.” “Alone? That’s exactly how you’ve always rewritten the story! To suit yourself! You wrote in your novel that you were the one who killed Fumiharu, who killed Yui, who killed the baby Toco, and you wrote a story where the doll Toco hated you and killed you. You put a letter that made it seem like you and Yui hated each other into Yui’s photo album in order to make Tohko read it.” Kanako was silent, wearing a stubborn expression. A steely light was in her eyes. I wanted to get it across to this woman. What I had seen in my despair. The truth I had grasped there. “I suppose that for you, the act of writing a novel means telling the ugly truth exactly as it happened. “But if there’s an ugly truth, a beautiful truth must exist, too. Stories aren’t purely ugly. They’re not purely tragic or sad, either. There are tender things and beautiful things in there. The way I turned away from pain and ugliness, you, Kanako, didn’t try to see kindness or hope. You denied it and rewrote it. I’m a coward, but you’re arrogant!” “What would a child like you know?” Her cold voice struck my ears. “Yes, I’m a child. But I won’t be a child forever! Someone educated me. They taught me a way to shine the light of imagination on dark reality and change the world—” My heart was thrumming and my head was getting hot. Yes, the person at my side, who was watching me with a prayer in her eyes—Tohko had taught me that. Each time I’d been hit squarely by a blow and struck down, the book girl had held my hand and helped me to stand. She had changed the hope hiding in the dark world into shining words and told them to me. On the roof at the beginning of summer, at the church in the middle of the night, at the shadowy estate, on the stage being watched by spectators, in the moonlit factory, below the starry sky glinting in the ceiling! “What is true happiness?” “So perhaps the truly important thing is not that you get hold of something, but that you keep searching for it.” If you open the cover of a book, you’ll encounter someone’s imagination there. “Lift your head and try looking at the sky! In this world, there are as many books and as much imagination as there are stars in the sky!” “An author doesn’t simply present you with reality. They should be able to light a spark in it and imagine a new story! In Strait Is the Gate, Alissa is torn between Jerome and God. God is the ideal she must pursue, the thing she cannot touch in a high, faraway place. In order to behold it, she must go on alone— “The same way that you said an author must be someone that goes through the narrow gate alone, Alissa cast everything aside and passed from the narrow gate. But does Strait Is the Gate make us cast everything aside to enter?” I stood taller and declared, “I don’t think so!” Tohko’s eyes widened. “If you enter it with lots of things you’ve gained over time in your heart, there will be no reason to fear even a dark, narrow path. With the power of imagination, you can illuminate the dark path. “Maybe that’s just me being seventeen and not understanding anything. Maybe what you said was right. Maybe the pitch-dark path goes on interminably beyond the gate and a despair you can’t possibly imagine lies in wait for you there. “But I’m seventeen and I read Strait Is the Gate, and that’s how I felt. “This is the truth for me right now that I thought about and took hold of at seventeen!” A smile like violets was spreading across Tohko’s lips and eyes. The warm smile that had always shone a light on my heart— “Are you saying you’re going to write a novel just to show me? In Yui’s place?” Kanako asked me, getting annoyed. I smiled abruptly. “No.” I had finally reached it. I had finally gotten here. With that soft, satisfied feeling, I said, “I’m not the one who’s going to write Yui’s story. That’s you, Kanako.” Surprise came over Kanako’s face. “What are you talking about?” “Yui already left behind a story for you. You just haven’t realized it.” Kanako’s eyebrows hiked up, and in a stringent voice she said, “There wasn’t even a diary in Yui’s things, let alone a story. If you’re talking about the letters you saw, you’ve guessed wrong. Yui isn’t the one who wrote those.” Tohko’s expression wilted. The letters that had fallen from the pale violet box and scattered—who had written those? Who had torn them up? I had a realization. The one who’d written them was Tohko. She must have been calling out to Kanako with her mother’s feelings. After I’d left the condo, Kanako had gone back to the house and checked what the letters said. She realized that it wasn’t something Yui had written, and she must have been in transports of rage and torn them up. That night, how had Tohko felt when she got home and had to pick up the fragments of the letters scattered around the room? When I thought about it, it made my chest squeeze tight. “Those false letters?! Are you trying to trick me, telling me that’s Yui’s story?” “I’m not. Yui’s story isn’t something written down in a letter. It’s something that’s been at your side this whole time.” Kanako knit her brows. “It’s right in front of you, right now. It’s worried about you. It’s wishing it could talk with you.” Kanako’s gaze turned slowly toward Tohko, who stood beside me. She fixed her eyes on the book girl with her braids, standing there desolately, and she gasped as if she’d been shot through the heart. Her face still tense as she looked at Tohko, I told her, “The story Yui left for you is Tohko.” A fresh surprise came over Kanako’s face. “Tohko would tell me exuberantly that you’re a good, kind person. No matter how harsh the treatment she got from you, she adored you. “Those feelings are something she inherited from Yui. Yui loved you and always talked about you, so Tohko inevitably started to love you, too. Yui gave her love for you to Tohko. The story like manna that Yui spent her entire life writing was inside Tohko.” The white, pure sustenance fluttering down from God in heaven. A sweet miracle gently filling an empty spirit. It was the stories without count that Tohko had poured into our hearts until now. With a sunny, kind voice, with clear, intelligent eyes— Tohko had been hurt, too, in fact. She’d spent her days not being loved by someone she loved in a wish that might never be granted. But in the midst of it, Tohko hadn’t stopped turning the pages. She trusted in hope, trusted in the future, and kept turning to the next page. She had gently taken the hands of people curled up in despair and what the book girl with her braids told them wasn’t a Pollyanna dream. They were the heartwarming, encouraging words of a girl who knew of darkness and knew of pain, and who was trying to overcome them. “Try imagining something happy, that the future is bright and wonderful!” “After you wake up from a beautiful dream, the story stays in your heart.” Surely that was something that her mother Yui had entrusted to her. Something that Tohko was trying to pass on to Kanako. Kanako was looking at her with a rigid expression. Conflict and thirst came into her eyes. Tohko was looking back at Kanako with an earnest gaze. After the passage of long years, the mother and daughter linked by blood were finally looking at each other. Now was the moment to pass on her mother’s story, the story Tohko held in her heart. “Kanako, I’m not the one who’s going to complete Yui’s story; you are. Please accept the story that was prepared for you.” That night in the planetarium, Tohko had passed the baton to me. She had looked at me and smiled, as if to say, “From now on, it’s on your turn,” and then she’d turned me toward Miu and let me give an important confession. This time I would give the baton to Tohko— When I squeezed her hand, Tohko flinched terribly and looked over at me. She was confused, and still holding her hand, filling my words with my wish, I said sunnily, “All right, Kanako. If anyone can interpret the story Yui entrusted to Tohko, picture it, and write it down, it’s you. Because you’re an author.” Kanako’s shoulders shook feebly. The hunger and thirst that had come into her eyes had grown so great she couldn’t hide them anymore. I looked at Tohko with a smile. Tohko’s eyes were round. When I slowly guided the hand I held toward Kanako, a smile touched her lips. It spread steadily and became an overflowing smile. I nodded, as if giving her the signal. Tohko nodded, too, then pulled her hand from mine and walked toward Kanako. Then, a smile still on her face, she started talking to her gently. “Aunt Kanako… the reason I call you ‘aunt’ is because my mom told me to call you that. She told me, ‘An aunt is like a second mother, and Kana is another mother for you, Tohko.’ ” A shock ran over Kanako’s face and it twisted as if it might shatter. “My mom realized at some point that you were the one who’d given birth to me. So she was trying to tell me that you were my real mother. When I woke up at night, she would often be gazing at a purple bottle and talking to herself. She was saying, ‘I’m sorry, Kana.’ ” Kanako’s face was breaking down steadily. Her lips trembled and her face was falling. Yui hadn’t been a weak person secluding herself in a dream world. It may have been that way at first, but she realized the truth on her own. She had suffered, but even so she’d hidden that fact and smiled warmly. And she had poured so much of her love for Kanako into Tohko. For the day when she would eventually give Tohko back to her. She was someone who’d had that strength. “The letters I wrote under my mom’s name weren’t a lie. They were all things I’d seen and things my mom had told me. She enjoyed telling stories about you, flipping through the photo album, more than anything else. She would always tell me that you were her best friend, that she’d loved you ever since the first time she met you, and that she’d wanted to be with you.” Tohko wove her words kindly, sweetly. Pure manna was falling from the sky, glittering white. “My mom was upset, thinking that she’d stolen your happiness from you, Aunt Kanako. The reason she looked at you uneasily wasn’t out of jealousy. It’s because she was worried about you.” Kanako listened to Tohko’s voice, trembling. Her red, swollen eyes were focused, trying to interpret the story left to her by the person she’d loved. “About two weeks before she died, my mom held me in her arms and cried. That day she told me.” Tohko’s eyes were faintly touched with tears, too. But still smiling softly, her voice penetratingly kind—the girl who looked like Kanako told her with Yui’s voice and gaze, “I wish Kana could realize that there are people who love her. “I wish she could realize how little Ryu feels. “I wish she would let him call her ‘mom.’ ” The things Yui had wanted to tell her. That Kanako wasn’t alone. That there were people who loved her. That, if only she would realize it, she could have a family— Tohko stretched a hand out toward Kanako. A slip of pale pink paper like a cherry blossom petal rested in the palm of her open hand. It was the one scrap of the letter that Tohko had picked up. “Dear Kana” It was written in a gentle hand. Tohko’s eyes were soft and clear as she gazed at Kanako, too. Sparks of turmoil came over Kanako’s face. Her hand was shaking as she reached out toward Tohko’s. Their hands overlapped, and a whisper slipped from Kanako’s lips, sounding as if it had been wrung out of her. “… Tohko.” Tohko looked like she was about to break into tears. And then she smiled, like a flower bathed in light. Kanako’s face was taut, as if she was desperately trying to contain the sway of her intense emotions. But when Kanako held the infant Tohko in her arms for the first time, she had smiled with joy. She brought her face close to Tohko’s cheek and called her “Tohko.” She’d rejoiced with all her heart at Tohko’s birth. Kanako softly squeezed the slip of paper in Tohko’s palm. She brought it tenderly to her chest, and with a cool face she whispered, “… Where is Ryuto’s hospital?” Those were the words of a beginning for Kanako. I wanted to write for you, Kana. You’ve watched Tohko eat the stories I wrote, haven’t you? I’ve wanted to give you your wish for a long time. I’ve wanted to let you be full. I’ve wanted to give you lots and lots of sweet, sweet manna, like pure white snow that God rains down from the sky. Be nice to Ryu, okay, Kana? Listen to what he tells you. Let him call you mom. Ryu loves you, Kana. Tohko and I will always love you, too, Kana. I’m not going to use the sleeping powder of Ole Lukøje. I’ll be waiting with Tohko when the time comes that you finish your long journey and come back from that gate to us. I’ll open my arms wide for you and smile. Please God, let Kana be the happiest person in the world.
Chapter 205
44 min read