THE STABBING PAIN FADED FROM Kokoro’s forehead. She wiped away her tears, and laid her palm on the broken piano keys.
‘Just hold on,’ she called, looking over at the desk, at Fuka’s neatly arranged pens lying idle.
‘I will help you. And then I’ll say to you: I’m so happy I met you too, Fuka.’
✦ ✦ ✦
THE ROOM NEXT TO FUKA’S belonged to Rion.
She hesitated for a moment, before turning the handle and pushing the door open.
It was definitely a boy’s room. A burlap bag and football lay on the floor, things he must have brought with him at some point. Just like the other rooms, the Wolf Queen had trashed it. Even so, Kokoro thought: This is clearly Rion’s room.
Just as Rion had said, there was an X underneath his bed. She scraped it lightly with her fingernail.
Rion had noticed that the Wolf Queen was not the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood, but from The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.
How did he even know? And why didn’t he tell anyone?
She was thinking this when she heard a singsong voice.
✦ ✦ ✦
‘KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK. IT’S YOUR mother! No, it isn’t! It’s the wolf!’
A young girl – of elementary school age perhaps – had a book open on her lap and was reading aloud from it.
It was Rion’s older sister, Mio-chan.
She was wearing a hospital gown and a cap. Kokoro saw she had no hair.
Rion was only five years old, and loved to come to the hospital to visit his sister.
Mio may have been bald, but her eyes were large, her skin creamy. Whenever Rion was asked in kindergarten who he would marry, he always answered, ‘Mio-chan!’
Mio-chan was so good at reading aloud, and she’d brought alive the same scene many times – ‘It’s your mother! No, it isn’t! It’s the wolf!’ – with all the appropriate facial expressions.
‘OK, so who do you think it is?’ she asked him. ‘The mother? Or the wolf?’
And Rion cried out, ‘It’s the wolf!’ as if he were inside the story himself.
‘Well, then … we shall see, won’t we …’ said Mio-chan, turning the page.
She was skilled at making up her own stories as well. Rion thought she should write her own: of robots from the future, or the search for a spy in a locked house. She came up with so many amazing ideas, all of them far more fun than anything to be found in a book.
‘All right, Rion. It’s time to go home,’ their mother cut in, and they each nodded a reluctant ‘Okaay.’
They got up to leave the hospital ward, with its faint odour of disinfectant, and Rion took his parents’ hands. ‘See you later, Rion,’ Mio-chan said, with a small wave.
‘We’ll come again tomorrow, Mio.’
As they were walking home along the tree-lined road, the autumn leaves a burnished gold, Rion’s mother suddenly turned to him and said, ‘Rion, I don’t think it’s such a good idea for Mio-chan to read that story.’
‘Why not?’
His mother’s hand, grasping his own so tightly, was trembling.
‘The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats,’ she replied, sounding irritated, ‘was the play that Mio was supposed to be in at kindergarten. I’m sure she hasn’t forgotten.’
‘Come now,’ Rion’s father said. ‘That’s a long time ago, and I don’t think Mio remembers. She likes that book, and they both seem to enjoy it.’
‘Oh, be quiet!’ Rion’s mother shouted. She sank down on to the ground. ‘Why?’ A tiny whisper escaped her lips. ‘Why Mio? Why did it have to be her?’
Rion stared in shock at his hand, which his mother had shaken off. His father was rubbing her back. He helped her to her feet.
Rion stared at his parents, confused. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
He thought they were angry at him. But his mother didn’t reply, just silently bit her lip. ‘It’s OK,’ his father said instead, and ruffled his hair with his fingers.
✦ ✦ ✦
‘RION?’ HIS SISTER SAID TO him, another day when he was visiting the hospital. ‘You stay well, OK, and be with Mum and Dad always.’
‘Uh – OK.’
Rion really didn’t know what she was getting at, but nodded anyway. Mio smiled.
A new decoration had arrived in her ward that day. A miniature Christmas tree had been placed by the window, and Rion realized what season it was.
On her bed lay a large toy which she had been playing with: an exquisite doll’s house, each perfectly formed room brightly lit with tiny bulbs. It was foreign-made and an English instruction book lay open beside it.
‘If I’m not here any more,’ Mio said, ‘I’ll hope for one single wish for you, Rion. I’m sorry you’ve had to put up with so much. You missed that trip, and then Mum couldn’t go to your dance recital either, could she?’
Rion couldn’t understand why she was bringing these things up, and he stared at her blankly.
Mio-chan was stuck in a bed, and so not being able to go on a trip, or Mum not attending whatever – it was only to be expected. What was she talking about?
‘I’ll hope for one wish for you,’ Mio-chan said again.
‘I want to be able to walk with you to school,’ he said. Rion would soon be going into elementary school.
His sister was silent. Rion wondered why she’d suddenly gone quiet.
After a while, she looked up and shook her head.
‘Next year when you start elementary school, Rion, I’ll be in junior high. We won’t be going to the same school.’ She paused. ‘But if I do go back to that school, then I want the same as you – to walk to school together, Rion, and to play with you.’
Her junior high uniform was hanging on the wall.
✦ ✦ ✦
HE WAS SURE SHE WOULD never die. But then she did.
The last time he spoke to her was only a few hours earlier.
She reached out a hand to his and, in a barely audible whisper, said, ‘Rion … I’m sorry I scared you. But I had a good time.’
Rion remembered thinking that even up till the moment she died, she was always thinking about others.
Like she said, seeing her suffer was indeed very scary. Rion couldn’t stop crying; from fear, but also from not wanting to say goodbye.
Her funeral was at the beginning of April; a spring rain was falling as Rion sat beside his father. His mother was a pale shell of her former self, and when a guest came up to her she merely bowed, her eyes vacant.
You stay well, OK, and be with Mum and Dad always.
Rion finally understood what his sister’s words meant.
Her junior high uniform hung in her hospital room for a year. They’d hung it there in the hope that she would one day start, but she never wore it, not even once.
✦ ✦ ✦
‘YOU’RE REALLY LUCKY, TO BE so healthy.’
The first time his mother said this was when Rion was in first grade in elementary school, the same age Mio had been when she fell sick.
Rion had joined a local football team and was beginning to enjoy learning a new sport. And then, as Rion was about to go out to play, ball in hand, his mother said, ‘If only she’d had half the energy you have.’
Rion was caught off guard.
He couldn’t think what to say. ‘Uh …’ he managed.
‘Uh … you say,’ his mother mocked, and lowered her eyes.
They had been told of Mio’s condition while his mother was pregnant with Rion. Simultaneously monitoring Mio’s treatment and taking care of baby Rion overwhelmed her for several years, and Rion knew she resented having to manage both of them at the same time.
Photos of his sister were on display on the far wall of the living room.
There was a photo of her last piano recital before she went into the hospital, a photo of the whole family, a photo of Mio and her mother in the hospital just before she passed away. And over by the window, they kept the exquisite doll’s house her parents had bought for her, and which she had loved so much.
Even if I’m healthy, and living with them …
That wouldn’t comfort his parents. Rion wasn’t sure when he’d realized this, but he had become certain of it.
He was more sporty than his peers. But even that made his mother wonder why. ‘Why is the younger brother so much stronger than his older sister?’ ‘If only a little bit of that good health could have rubbed off on Mio …’
‘Rion-kun is quite amazing, isn’t he? I heard a scout’s coming from a club team to check him out,’ one of the other mothers had said to Rion’s mother.
But Rion’s mother downplayed it. ‘He’s not that good …’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He does it because he enjoys it, but it’s not as if that’s what his father and I want for him.’