BUT TODAY OF ALL DAYS, her mother asked her to stay at home as she was expecting a delivery.
‘I ordered a large houseplant to be delivered this morning, and I need you to sign for it,’ her mother said. Kokoro was worried.
Having to sit tight at home this morning meant she couldn’t go to the castle. And there were only two days left. On top of that, she wanted to get to Careo.
‘I think they’ll deliver fairly early this morning.’
‘OK,’ Kokoro said cheerily. The last thing she needed was for her mum to feel suspicious.
But the delivery was not at all early; the delivery man arrived, apologizing for the delay, at three minutes to twelve, so technically still the morning but just under the wire.
Kokoro was despairing. She signed for it with a surly thank you. But she knew showing any irritation was pointless.
She placed the plant carefully in the hallway, grabbed her purse, ran out of the house, jumped on her bike, and raced down the road. It was going to be hit or miss whether she still had time to get to the castle after all this.
Whenever she passed other junior high-schoolers on the road, she felt herself shrinking, and gripped the handlebars tighter.
I should have worn gloves, she thought.
She’d forgotten how sharp the air could be in March.
When she reached the shopping centre, she was a little confused about where to go. Cakes, napkins – she wasn’t totally sure where she’d find them, and by the time she had, it was getting close to three o’clock.
Just below the entrance to Careo were advertising banners exhorting shoppers to buy stationery for the new school year. Kokoro couldn’t bear to look.
Whenever her eye caught anything with an April date on it, she looked away. By then the castle would no longer exist.
Her mind was filled with these thoughts as she pedalled furiously home. Somehow she made it back. She climbed off the bike, and was about to go inside—
‘Oh.’
She thought she could hear a small voice nearby. She looked up from her bike.
The small figure of Tojo-san.
She was standing on the pavement in front of the house, gazing across at her.
She was wearing a cool duffel coat and checked muffler, and looked a thousand times smarter than when she was in her uniform. She was holding a bag from a convenience store, as if she too were just back from shopping.
‘Tojo-san,’ Kokoro called, worried she might ignore her as before.
‘Kokoro-chan,’ Tojo-san said.
Kokoro’s chest tightened. It had been a long time since she’d even heard her voice, let alone when she called her name.
‘Thank you for your note,’ Kokoro said quickly, to pre-empt her walking away. ‘Is it true that you’re going to transfer?’
‘Yeah.’ Tojo-san nodded, coming closer. Suddenly, Tojo-san broke into a smile. ‘Would you like to come over to my house?’
Kokoro’s eyes widened, and Tojo-san held up the plastic bag in her hand. ‘I bought some ice cream, and it’d be a waste if it melts. Let’s go home and eat it.’
✦ ✦ ✦
IT WAS NEARLY A YEAR since she’d last been at Tojo-san’s.
She was reminded how the layout was almost the same as her own house, though furnished entirely differently; the ornaments, paintings and rugs could not be more contrasting.
The floor was now covered with cardboard boxes. White boxes with Moving Centre printed on them. Kokoro realized, with a twinge, that it was true. She really was moving away.
The walls were still lined with the European prints collected by her father. Kokoro’s eye was drawn to the illustration from Little Red Riding Hood, the scene where the wolf, having swallowed Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, is lying in bed as the hunter arrives.
Naturally this reminded her of her own Wolf Queen.
‘Oh, about that drawing …’ Tojo-san said, noting Kokoro’s interest. ‘It’s from Little Red Riding Hood, but she’s not actually in it. I told my dad I thought it was strange to hang a picture from a fairy tale when the main character isn’t shown there, but he said it was the only one he could buy. He said drawings with Little Red Riding Hood in them were way more expensive and he couldn’t afford them.’
‘Now that you mention it, you wouldn’t be able to work out from this single illustration that this is about Little Red Riding Hood. But I remember you telling me before, Moé-chan, so I already knew.’
The single clue was the wolf showing a swollen belly and the basket of wine lying on the floor.
Kokoro suddenly realized she’d called Tojo-san by the more familiar Moé-chan. Tojo-san didn’t seem to notice. ‘Right?’ was all she said, smiling in agreement. It made Kokoro feel happy.
‘Come over here,’ Tojo-san said, showing her into the sitting room. She took out two small tubs of ice cream from the bag. ‘Take whichever you like.’
Kokoro chose strawberry, Tojo-san took macadamia nut, and they sat opposite each other in companionable silence.
After a few minutes, Tojo-san suddenly said, ‘I’m sorry.’
She said it casually, and Kokoro knew she was trying to make it sound as light as she could. Tojo-san had been chipping away at the same spot in her ice cream, apparently carefully choosing the right moment. That’s how it struck Kokoro.
Kokoro bit her lip. She was painfully moved by Tojo-san’s apology, but she responded in the same tone. ‘It’s OK,’ she said.
Kokoro thought she knew why she was apologizing. Jabbing at the ice cream with her spoon, Tojo-san carried on speaking, though she avoided Kokoro’s eyes.
‘At the beginning of the third semester when I saw you by the slipper cubbies, I really wanted to say something. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry. Things were a little sensitive then.’
‘Sensitive?’
She steeled herself, certain of something hurtful coming her way, when Tojo-san looked up and said, ‘Things were sensitive between me and Miori and her group.’
A yelp of surprise stuck in Kokoro’s throat.
Kokoro could well imagine what had happened. She sat mutely on the sofa, and Tojo-san smiled.
‘Miori and her group were starting to blank me. I was being left out. So if they found out you’d talked to me, I was worried Miori’s gang would find a reason to be mean to you.’
‘But why …’
Why had things turned out like that? At the start of the first semester Tojo-san was a new transfer student, cheerful and outgoing, a popular girl everyone wanted to be friends with.
She thought about it for a moment, and turned pale.
‘Was it – because of me?’ She could feel the blood drain from her face. ‘I heard from Ms Kitajima that it was you who’d told her what happened between me and Sanada-san. Is it because of that?’
Why hadn’t she thought of this? Whether he had any idea of what Miori Sanada had done or not, even Mr Ida knew something was going on. And Miori must have wanted to know who had told him. Kokoro could well imagine what sort of awful things Miori would do to anyone who betrayed her.
‘No, that’s not it,’ Tojo-san said, scraping at the ice cream again. She gave a faint smile. ‘That might have … been a small part of it, but I don’t think that was the real reason. They said I was stuck up, that I was making fun of them, and they wouldn’t put up with it.’
‘Making fun of them …’
A phrase Kokoro had heard quite recently. Being made fun of, making fun of.
‘A while before, Nakayama-san in their group accused me of stealing away her boyfriend, called me a man-stealer, and after that, I just didn’t care any more. Dad had told me he might be moving to a different university in April, and as I was going to leave, the whole thing just irritated me, and I gave up trying to make excuses for them.’
Gave up – she made it sound light, but there was also a hint of sadness in it. Tojo-san took a spoonful of ice cream. Kokoro did likewise. The sweetness slowly melted in her mouth.
‘I probably did … make fun of her.’ Kokoro understood. ‘And our teachers probably think that’s not a good thing to do. Ida called me in and said so. You’re pretty mature, he said, and perhaps you look down on the others a bit, but the other girls are trying their best to be friends with you, yada yada yada.’
‘Yada yada?’ Kokoro said in surprise, and Tojo-san’s eyes sparkled mischievously.
‘I couldn’t care less,’ she explained. Compared to the last time they’d caught up with each other, Kokoro found her way of speaking now more direct and cool.