Chapter 206

Chapter 8—The Scribe Who Faced God Dawn was breaking when Ryuto woke up. The second he saw Kanako, his face twisted up in disbelief and tears filled his eyes. “… Mom.” He called to her, as if to confirm that he could say it, and then he sobbed fat tears, like a little child. Kanako only murmured brusquely, “… Today was my deadline. What a troublesome boy.” When she heard that, Tohko looked like she might indeed cry, and then she smiled. Apparently Ryuto had been in real danger briefly, and he ended up being hospitalized for a fair amount of time. Maki had deftly pulled some strings with the police on the Takeda situation apparently. When I went to visit Ryuto after school, Takeda was there. Sitting on a chair beside his bed, leaning back against Ryuto’s chest, her eyes were closed peacefully. Ryuto was tenderly stroking her fluffy hair. “… Thanks for tryin’ to kill me.” “I killed the Takumi that was inside you, Ryu. All that’s here now is Ryu, who’s all for me. You can’t cheat on me anymore. If you start to like anyone but me, I’ll kill you and then I’ll die, too.” Takeda turned her face toward Ryuto. I saw their lips slowly approach each other, and I quickly quieted my footsteps and snuck out of the room. I understood how they felt, but I couldn’t burst in on their tender moment. Still carrying the flowers I’d brought for my visit, I was wearing a blush in the hallway when Maki called out to me. “Well, well, did you get hit with the dopey couple?” “Um… did you come to visit Ryuto, too?” “You know, just to check up on him. There was a line of girls here before, and that kid chased off every last one of them. You missed something incredible.” “I did?” Her sensual lips pulled up with pleasure. “She stood in front of the room, put a box cutter against her throat, and told them, ‘If you come one step closer, I’ll cut myself. Ryu’s my boyfriend, so please don’t go near him.’ “Since she said it in a deadpan with that expressionless dollface, it scared everyone and they all left.” My heart was rushing. What are you thinking, Takeda—?! It terrified me how she seemed like she really could just go slice. I was sure everyone had sensed that it wasn’t a threat and it had given them a shudder. “Ryuto finally got his hands on his ideal woman.” She said it with a breezy expression, then put her hands to her stomach with a candid look on her face. I remembered that even now Ryuto’s child was in there. What would Maki do next? My heart squeezed tight, but there was no shadow over Maki’s face. “I can’t kill someone or chain them up just because I love them. “So I couldn’t have been Ryuto’s only lover. But I will have the baby. It’ll probably throw Grandpa and the rest of them into conniptions, but it’s not as if I care. Actually, I can’t wait. Because this child is a symbol of my freedom, from a boy that I liked by my own choice!” Her hand still resting on her stomach, she lifted her face and made her declaration with a regal smile. The sight of her like that was incredibly brilliant and powerful. Maki would probably love the child she bore with all of her heart. She would probably tell it the same thing she was telling me now. With her chest thrown out brazenly, proudly. “You are the child of a man I loved.” “Could I have those flowers?” “Go ahead.” I held the cute bouquet of tulips and baby’s breath in a riot of spring colors out to her reverently, and Maki accepted it happily. “Heh-heh. Thanks.” When I left the hospital, a gentle dusk colored everything outside. Clouds shining faintly peach floated in a sky the color of water. Through them shone straight beams of light, like a stairway climbing to the heavens. A golden hour both warm and holy. A gentle, melancholy backdrop in which love, sadness, hatred, and hope had melted together and been strained out like amber-colored consommé. In the shallow light, Tohko’s figure appeared and I heard her clear voice. “Konoha.” In front of a rippling curtain, she looked at me and smiled like a violet. “Hey, do you know what an improv story is? You write a story using three keywords.” A pure white piece of paper. A mechanical pencil. A girl with braids from the next grade up tilting her head teasingly and clicking a silver stopwatch. The things she had given to me. The book club after school, the aroma of old books, mounds of books. The sound of pages turning. A desk with an uneven surface the color of dark tea, a fold-up chair beside a window. Dust dancing in the light. A soft smile. A bright voice expounding on something. A torrent of glittering words. The sun sank, and in the glow before the world fell asleep, the images I’d seen up till now rose again in my mind. In every one, Tohko was there. My heard pounded with a thmp… Ever since making the proclamation to Kanako that beautiful stories existed, too, there had been something squirming impatiently inside my heart, trying to beat its wings. A creature with huge wings was flying out of the deepest part of my body. It was the impulse to write these images down for posterity. I want to write. About this golden scene, warm and pure, that gathers desolation and kindness and love and everything into itself. About the girl smiling within it. I want to write. About these feelings, so sweet and tender it makes my heart tremble. I want to put it into words and tell people! A shock bolted through my brain—as if something I hadn’t been able to see up till now had suddenly been pointed out right in front of me and my field of view had opened up. My skin itched almost electrically, my pulse quickened, my chest felt tight, my emotions were harried—before I realized it, I was running home, muttering, “I have to write, I have to write.” I have to write. While this trembling, this impulse, stays in my soul. I want to make notes about it. I want to express it. I want to share it. Everything that’s happened since I met Tohko. The time that was like being inside a gentle sunset that had no comparison. What kind of a person Tohko was. What she taught me. How we had spent our time. The instant I returned home, I sat at my desk, opened my fifty-page notebook, and began to write rabidly with a mechanical pencil. While I strung the letters together, moving the pencil so intently that I practically forgot where I was, I remembered the first time I’d written a novel. How I had loved Miu so, so much that I could hardly bear it; how I had wanted to tell her more than anything; and how I had filled the lines of paper, my mind filled with thoughts of her. How my heart had pattered and felt like it might burst. I had searched my heart and it turned into words, which embarrassed me but inevitably made me happy. I want to write better! I want to share this more skillfully! How can I get it across? What words should I choose? Through trial and error, the more I wrote, the more my heart fluttered and the more the pages I’d written in my notebook increased, which made me so, so happy. Even though I had refused so thoroughly to write until now. Even though I had thought writing was nothing but suffering. Those days when I had spent the time writing with Miu in my thoughts, I really had had more fun than I could describe, stringing words together, adding sentences, and creating a story. Like the trees stretching their supple, green branches toward the clear sky, the more I wrote, the more I’d felt as if my feelings were swelling toward infinity, as if I could go anywhere at all. Of course, there were also times partway through when I got stuck. But I’d pondered it for all I was worth, and when I’d managed to break through it, it had made me even happier. I want Miu to read this soon! I want her to be happy! The way I’d felt back then reawakened vividly in my heart, my eyes, my fingertips. Right now, in this moment, I was blissful, as if I was enfolded in absolutely pure light, the way I’d been unbearably happy when I was writing my novel in those days. The way I’d felt Miu close by back then, now I felt Tohko’s hand, her gaze, her breathing with all of my five senses—with all of my heart. “Write a novel someday, okay? Let me read the story you write, okay?” The book girl had been drawing away, but now she was right in front of me, smiling purely. “I’m hungry, Konoha. Write me something, pleeeease.” “Yummm! It tastes like piping-hot steamed buns!” At some point, writing snacks for Tohko had become fun. I would fill the notebook paper, excited to think about how she would react. In that tiny room dyed by the coming evening, I was an author and Tohko was my reader. I knew well the contentment of writing and the joy of having someone to read it. I couldn’t write Yui’s story. But I would write my own! I wanted to finish it and give my answer to Tohko! Because she was the one who’d been giving me the strength to write all along— From then until graduation, I wrote continually at home and at school. Maki told me that Tohko was coming to school even though her exams were still in front of her and was working as a model for her paintings. “Tohko was the one who came and told me she wanted me to paint her. Even though she was incredibly angry that I was pregnant with Ryuto’s baby. I’ll draw with everything I’ve got, too. I plan to make it the best picture I’ve ever done.” She talked excitedly. Maybe Tohko was trying to leave something behind, too. She was supposedly coming to school, but she never showed herself at the book club or to me. I didn’t go see her, either. I just faced my notebook paper and kept on writing. There wasn’t enough time before graduation. I had to make it. Akutagawa didn’t ask me about it. He watched over me with an earnest gaze as I wrote in my notebook, even during lunch. Kotobuki had been looking at me sadly. Biting her lip, with eyes that seemed to ask, “Why are you writing the book you said you weren’t going to write? Who are you writing it for? “I thought you didn’t want to write anything like that. Didn’t you cry because you didn’t want to write? So then why are you writing?” Her tearful eyes that seemed to criticize me—I felt as if they were begging me, “Don’t write!!” Each time, a gouging pain shot through me. My cheeks burned with Kotobuki’s eyes on them, my throat closed up, and it was hard to breathe. But I kept moving my pen. I couldn’t talk to Kotobuki right now. I knew that when I finished writing this novel, I would have an answer. It was on March 12 that I heard Tohko was having her secondary exam that day. “She said they’d announce the results on the twenty-third. If Tohko gets in, you won’t be able to see her the way you have up till now.” The name Maki told me was a school even farther north than her father’s hometown. Graduation was closing in with two more days to go. And that day was also the fourteenth. The day had come. I put the three hundred and fifty pages I had stayed up all night to finish into an envelope, and I left the house. I had conquered my sleepiness and my eyes were clear. Feeling the still slightly chilly breeze of early spring on my skin, I cut through a neighborhood and headed onto a major road. Before I gave the manuscript to Tohko, I would talk to Kotobuki. Apologize for everything that had happened, and then… I saw Kotobuki standing in the place we used to meet and my breath caught. She had a white peacoat on over her school uniform and hugged her schoolbag in her arms with her head bent. “… Kotobuki.” When I called to her softly, her shoulders twitched and she raised her face; then she smiled feebly. “Morning, Inoue… Today’s the fourteenth, huh?” “I’m sorry I didn’t have time to get you anything in return for Valentine’s Day.” “No, it’s fine.” Still smiling, Kotobuki shook her head. Then she looked at the paper bag under my arm and her face grew sad. “… You finished your novel, huh?” “Yeah.” “… You’re giving it to Tohko, right?” “Kotobuki, I—” “Tear that novel up.” She said it with a face on the verge of tears, and I gulped. I saw her face, and my throat closed up even more. My chest was being crushed in the grip of it. “I’m sorry, I can’t. And I can’t be with you.” The eyes looking up at me were filling with tears. “Yeah… I figured. You called me Kotobuki before. That was your answer, right?” Pain pierced my throat. But I had to say it. All the way to the end and do it right. “You did a lot to save me, Kotobuki, and I got courage from you. When you told me I didn’t have to write anymore, I was so incredibly happy. Right then, I thought I wanted to be with you forever.” Kotobuki’s face crumpled like tissue paper, and she shouted in a sharp voice, “But you wrote a novel!! You said you didn’t want to, but then you wrote it!” The tears had filled to the brim and spilled down her cheeks. Kotobuki scrubbed the tears away with one hand, but even so they welled up in fat bulbs, so she hung her head. “I-I thought that if it was hurting you, then it was better not to write. “But… that wasn’t true, was it? I really wasn’t the one who understood you best. It was Tohko. I was no good for you.” Desolation was welling up in me. I didn’t know just how much Kotobuki’s presence had helped me until then. And if Kotobuki hadn’t been there when I’d thought Tohko had betrayed me, I wouldn’t have been able to take it. I had truly felt tender toward her brusque way of talking and her awkward looks. I’d wanted to treasure her. And yet I’d hurt her and made her cry. I’m sorry, Kotobuki. And I’m sorry, Omi. “The scarf you gave me… I promised I would treasure it forever, but I lost it.” Her throat quivered and she sobbed as she spoke. The ground at her feet was wet with her falling tears. “… Ngh, I have a request. Say my name just once—once is all I need.” Feeling as if my heart were being torn to bits, I said it. “… Nanase.” Kotobuki lifted her face. She smiled awkwardly, her cheeks still soaked from her tears. “Thank you… It’s been my dream that you would call me by my name. It came true. Thank you. That makes me happy.” Her tears fell fast. She was smiling, but it didn’t look anything like a smile. “I’m going to go on ahead, okay? I’m sorry… can you stay here a little longer?” Then she asked, “If Tohko goes far away and you can’t see her anymore, would you let me be your girlfriend again?” “I can’t do that.” “Oh… um, I read Strait Is the Gate, too. That’s… all I wanted to say. I don’t know what it means. It’s okay not knowing, though. I’ll see you in class.” She spun around, then moved off quickly, rubbing at her face with one hand. I stood there until her bobbing back disappeared around a corner. Mori hit me. “You made Nanase look like an idiot! She’s liked you this whole time!!” In the corner of the empty hallway, Mori’s eyes were bright red and full of tears. The graduation ceremony started before I had any time to go to the third-year classrooms. Tohko’s name was called, and when I saw her mount the stage, my chest grew hot. Swaying her long, thin braids, she accepted her diploma, bowed, and then turned around. She was smiling placidly. When the ceremony ended, we had homeroom, and when that ended, school let out. I hurried to Tohko’s classroom with the brown envelope with the manuscript in it. All over the halls, I saw scenes of younger students handing the third-years bouquets or lamenting their separation. But when I went to Tohko’s classroom, someone in her class told me that she’d already left. Could she be at the clubroom? Panting, I opened the door to the book club in the western corner of the third floor. Tohko was standing in front of the window, looking at the view outside. “Tohko?” When I spoke, she gradually turned around. She wore a placid smile, just as she had when I saw her on the stage. She held in her arms the tube with her diploma in it and several bouquets. “Congratulations.” “Thanks. Although I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do next, so I don’t really feel like I’ve graduated.” “You said you would tell me if you got into college, right?” “You’re right. I’ll come let you know.” We were only talking in an ordinary way, but my chest was filling with desolation. “I was looking at the tree under this window just now.” “Which one…?” I stood beside Tohko and looked down. In the bright sunlight, a thick tree stood stretching out its branches. It was the tree Tohko had almost fallen out of when I was a first-year.