Only ten days of summer vacation now remained; before long, it would be fall. I wondered how much longer it would even be possible to go and see Ayane, assuming the rumors about her only appearing during the summer were true. Once autumn fell, it was entirely likely that no number of sparklers would be able to call her spirit forth again—at least not until next summer. However, I supposed it was equally likely that no one had ever tried going there and lighting sparklers at night during any other time of year, given that summer was the generally agreed-upon fireworks season.
But when, specifically, did summer turn to fall? At least here in Japan, we defined summer as the three-month period of June, July, and August, although the Japan Meteorological Agency considered any day on which the peak temperature rose above twenty-five degrees Celsius to be part of the “summer season.” Perhaps I could still meet with Ayane in September as well, as long as the weather stayed warm.
“So, hey, what’s the latest with Ayane-san’s body?” asked Aoi. “Have you been looking for it or what?”
“No,” I wrote back. “Been way too busy with cram school.”
If I truly couldn’t see her again after summer came to an end, and if I really did intend to kill myself by the end of the year, then now might be my only chance to go and find her remains. And if I didn’t step up to the plate, she could very well remain a missing person forever—a spirit with one lingering regret in her heart, doomed to haunt this city for eternity. I asked myself again: Was I going to do this, or not?
One day in the last week of August, I came home from cram school to find that my sketchbook—which had been stashed away among my heavy winter clothes in my closet like usual—was lying front and center on the living room table. It took my brain a few moments to register what was happening and I simply stood there in the center of the room, stock still and dumbfounded.
“Sit down, Tomoya.”
This voice belonged to my mother, who was just now walking in from the study. She pounded the tabletop with her palms, giving me the same look of disapproval she gave to badly behaved children in public. I could feel my stomach shriveling up into a ball.
“You’ve been drawing again, I see,” she continued, staring me down from the opposite side of the living room table.
“In between study sessions, yeah,” I said. “It’s like a palate cleanser. Helps keep my mind refreshed and engaged.”
“Then why were you hiding it from me?”
“Because I figured you’d throw it in the garbage if you found out,” I said. “Why were you rummaging through my closet?”
“Don’t start with me. I’m the one paying the bills here. Once you start pulling your own weight, maybe then we can have a little chat about privacy.”
My mother then proceeded to flip silently through my sketchbook, page by page. The room was so quiet that I could hear the wall clock ticking out each and every excruciating second. The sound of her methodically turning over each page of thick sketch paper was almost unbearably loud as well.
“Did we not agree that you were going to stop with all of this art nonsense in order to fully devote yourself to your schoolwork?” she asked.
“I already told you,” I said. “It’s just to help me relax a little between study sessions.”
“I’m very worried about you, Tomoya. I don’t want you getting obsessed with these silly little doodles of yours again, like you were back in junior high.”
I already knew, of course, that this was all my artistic achievements back then had ever amounted to in her mind—nothing more than silly little doodles.
“I’m not saying there’s no value in drawing whatsoever, of course,” she went on. “I think it’s a very healthy way to cultivate a sense of aesthetics in early childhood. But unless you’re an absolute prodigy, you should not be wasting this much time playing with crayons and colored pencils after elementary school. Do you have any idea how embarrassed I was to see you still drawing like this in junior high? Why, I’m mortified to know you’ve been doing it even in high school.”
My mother set the sketchbook back down on the table—opened to a page featuring a full-body sketch of Ayane with her feet floating ever so slightly off the ground. I liked this drawing an awful lot; I thought it captured her ineffable, otherworldly aura quite well for a mere pencil sketch. The viewer could instantly tell that it depicted a supernatural being descending from the skies, just about to set her feet down on solid earth.
“Okay,” I said, hoping to placate her. “You win. I’ll stop.”
“Oh really, now? And how do I know you’re not just saying that to end this conversation faster?” she asked.
“What can I do to make you believe me?”
Silence. I waited on pins and needles for my mother to respond. After a few moments’ pause, she reached down, picked up my sketchbook, and held it out to me.
“Dispose of it,” she said. “Tear out every page, one by one, and then rip them up and throw them in the garbage. If you can do that, then I suppose I’ll believe you.”
I took the sketchbook from her but hesitated. I knew, of course, that drawing my mother’s ire at this venture would be a very bad idea and that it would serve me best to just do as I was told and get rid of it. I could always buy another sketchbook and continue drawing in secrecy, after all. I had zero intention of actually quitting—but I had no problem with paying her lip service to make her believe that I was.
Even so, I was awfully fond of several of the drawings I’d done in this particular sketchbook. The one of Ryo, Aoi, and me walking to the abandoned airfield that day. And the ones of Ayane and I walking through the museum at night, and of us sitting on the radio tower together. The idea of simply disposing of these fond memories did not sit well with me.
“What’s the matter?” my mother asked. “Can’t do it?”