It had been on a cold and rainy day some time ago that I’d first met Bobtail and Skank-san. I’d donned my cute pink boots, brought out my pretty red umbrella, and been walking along the embankment in my fluttering yellow poncho, chasing a little frog. The little green frog was so pretty, and it quite dutifully made its way down the middle of the sidewalk, so I could keep following.
Somewhere along the way, I began jumping too. I laughed to myself, imagining that the two of us were doing some sort of special training together. The frog put all it had into that training. Surely it was a shy little thing, only conducting its training on rainy days, when there were few people around. I cheered the stalwart little frog on.
But perhaps the frog didn’t hear this encouragement, or perhaps it simply wasn’t planning to train today, because eventually it hopped off, scampered into the grass, and vanished. I was sad to see it go, but although I waded into the grass myself, and no matter how much I muddied my boots, I could not find the frog again.
I was filled with a sense of gloom, but there was nothing I could do. By now, I had pushed my way all the way to the riverside. I decided to climb back up the embankment, but I proceeded along a different path, never abandoning the hope that perhaps fate would help me find the frog again.
A bobtail cat was waiting for me at the end of the path, huddled in the grass. I ran over to her, kicking my way through puddles. She was covered in mud, flecked with red here and there. More than anything, I noticed that her tail was only half as long as it should be.
How terrible, I thought.
I did not wonder who she was, nor how she had ended up this way. I folded my umbrella and gently wrapped her up my arms, carrying her up the bank so as not to startle her. I could sense her quiet breathing.
At first, I thought I might take her back home. However, I quickly discarded that idea when I realized there would be no one else there. I couldn’t mend her wounds alone.
My face was cold from the rain, and I was sure that she must be cold too. I thought about whom I could implore for help. I climbed down the bank opposite the river and ran to the nearby cream-colored apartment building. Although I ran a bit recklessly, the cat did not stir in my arms.
I rang doorbells on the building’s first floor, starting from the end. There was no reply at the first door, nor was there one at the next, or the next, or the next. Finally, the fifth door swung open, but the woman who answered closed it again the moment she laid eyes on me. I kept trying at door after door, but there was no one home at most of them, and when occasionally someone did open the door, no one was interested in hearing me out. The little one in my arms was trembling.
I reached the last door of the building. My heart was racing as I pressed the doorbell. Her gentle breathing was growing fainter, and I was afraid that she might be fading away in my arms. I heard the bell ring within, then other sounds. At first, I was relieved to know that there was someone inside. There were plenty of other doors where there was no one present, even if the lights were on.
Footsteps approached slowly, someone unfastened the lock, and the knob turned. The moment that the door opened, I shouted: “Please save her!”
The beautiful woman looked at me in shock for a few moments. She looked at the little one in my arms. I stared into her eyes. You must look people in the eyes when you’re speaking to them, Hitomi-sensei had told me.
The young woman’s eyes stopped on my new friend’s trembling form, and then she did something that no one had done: she looked back into my eyes.
“Just a minute.”
She stepped inside, and returned with a towel. She took the little soul from my arms and took her inside, wrapping her up.
“You come in, too. Take off your coat and shoes.”
Hearing her gentle voice, I felt such relief I could have fallen asleep right then and there, but I needed to thank her first. I wondered what her name could be, and my eyes fell on the nameplate fixed beside the door.
I read the letters that were crudely scrawled over the nameplate in black magic marker.
“Skank…?”
It was a strange name. It didn’t sound Japanese at all. I wondered if she might be a foreigner, though she didn’t look it. I tilted my head curiously.
“Come on now, come inside, I’m not scary.”
The woman insisted that I have a bath before thanking her, and before I knew it I was washing myself. When I stepped out of the bathroom, some adult-sized pajamas were set out for me in place of my soaked clothes, and I gratefully slipped into them. The woman was wrapping the little cat in bandages. I watched her hands as she worked, not wishing to get in the way.
“Thank you, really,” I said, when she had finally finished her doctoring.
“No problem. I put your clothes in the dryer, so you can wait here until they’re ready.”
“Okay. Um…Skank-san?”
She looked taken aback when I said her name. Perhaps she was surprised that I knew it.
“That was what it said on your nameplate out front,” I explained. “It’s okay if I call you Skank-san, right?”
“You mean as my name?”
“Yes.”
As I nodded, she let out a great laugh. I hadn’t the slightest clue what that was supposed to mean. However, I was glad that she seemed to be amused, so I started to laugh, too.
“Aha ha. Ah, yeah, that’s just fine. That’s my name.”
“Are you from another country?”
“No, I’m Japanese.”
“Huh, that’s a weird name.”
Skank-san laughed again.
“Skank-san?” I said. “I can rewrite your nameplate for you, as a thank you for saving this little one. It might be rude, but I can’t say those letters are very well-written. My handwriting is much better.”
But she just shook her head. “Mm, I appreciate the offer, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d want you to bother with. I didn’t write it there, either.”
“Huh? So who wrote it?”
This time, she laughed thinly. “I’ve already forgotten who it was.”
And so I became friends with Skank-san and Miss Bobtail. Hitomi-sensei seemed to think that I didn’t have any friends, but in fact, I had wonderful friends. Friends who would play Othello with me. Who would walk with me. And I had friends who would talk to me about books.
That was why, even if I had no friends at school, and even if my father and mother were too busy to ever play with me, I was not lonely.