When I was living at the shelter, I walked around searching for my mom every day. Every day until it got dark, I walked around alone in the rubble of our town. Wherever I went, whoever I asked, they all said they didn’t know where she was. “Sorry, sorry, Suzume” was all they said. Every day, I wanted to write in my diary that I found my mom. But I couldn’t, and I wanted to forget that, so every night I colored my diary black. I colored it meticulously, frantically, filling in every bit of white with the black crayon.
I turn the page. Black.
I turn the page. Black.
Black, black, black.
I turn the page.
“…!”
I gasp. The tears gathered on my eyelids plop onto the diary.
This page has a brightly colored picture.
It’s a picture of a door. And inside the door, a starry sky.
On the next page, I see two people standing in a meadow. One is a little girl, and one is a woman with long hair wearing a white dress. They’re both smiling.
“It wasn’t a dream…!”
I touch the two figures softly. The thick pigment of the crayons comes off faintly on my fingertips, like I’ve managed to actually touch the past. It wasn’t a dream. It really happened. I wandered through a Gate into Ever-After and found my mother there. The door I can go through is here, in this place.
“I remember now—the moon was out that night! It was shining on that radio tower!”
Next to the drawing of the door is a moon and what looks like a skinny tower. I look up from the diary and scan my surroundings.
On the far side of the twilit wasteland, I find it. Like a matchstick standing alone in the dim landscape, the radio tower is still there.
I take off toward it.
“Suzume, wait!” Tamaki shouts, panicked. “You’re looking for that door?! But there’s no way some rubble from twelve years ago will still be there!”
Her puzzled voice fades away behind me.
I run straight across the darkening ruins toward the tower. Sadaijin runs next to me, like my shadow. Sometimes I glimpse concrete floors among the weeds, or short staircases, or piles of tires and scrap wood. I keep running until the radio tower looms above me, and then I stop and look around.
“Where is it?”
Panting, I scrutinize the landscape. Just like that night long ago, a full yellow moon hangs to the left above the tower. It should be nearby.
“Suuuzume,” a childish voice says. I look toward it and see a kitten sitting a short distance away in the shadows.
“Daijin…”
I run to the cat. It scampers away from me without answering.
“Hey…what are you doing?!”
I follow. We pass what must have been a gate, judging by the concrete base that remains. Daijin stops there and looks up at me. What appears to be an ivy-covered board is leaning against a low stone wall.
“Is this it?”
I kneel in the weeds and look more closely. It’s a door. I start pulling the ivy off with both hands, driven by some unseen force. The roots grip the door firmly, and I need all my strength to tear them off. My palms bleed a little from the sharp leaves and stems, but I barely feel it. I’m totally absorbed in pulling off the ivy. When the door is exposed, I lift it with both arms and prop it against the stone wall.
It’s a very ordinary wooden door, the kind you might see inside any house. It’s hung on hinges in a three-sided wooden frame. The veneer is flaking off, and at around waist height is a rusted metal knob. No doubt about it—this is the door I opened as a little girl.
“Daijin…,” I say. A thought has just occurred to me. “Was I wrong about you opening the Gates? This whole time, have you just been trying to lead me to them?”
Daijin stares up at me with those wide-open yellow eyes in its gaunt face. I give voice to the emotions welling inside me.
“Thank you, Daijin!”
The kitten looks surprised—and as I watch, its bony body swells until it’s plump and round. Its slack ears and tail perk up happily.
“Let’s go, Suzume!” it says brightly, once again looking like a fluffy ball of mochi.
“Let’s go!” I say, grabbing the knob and opening the door. A gust of wind blows out and pushes against me, like I’ve just opened an air lock. Inside is a sky full of gleaming stars.
“Whoa…”
I can’t help gasping. The night sky I’ve seen so many times in my dreams is here before my eyes. And I’m not just seeing it. The wind has a familiar smell, and the stars look so real I think I could touch them. I can go in. I know this with a strange certainty. This is my Gate. Sadaijin and Daijin are standing beside me.
“Suzume!” someone calls from behind. I turn around and see Tamaki running toward me.
“Tamaki, I’ll be back!” I shout.
“But where are you going?!”
“To see someone I love!”
I leap through the door, and the cats come with me. Brilliant, multicolored light surrounds me like I’m inside a prism.
According to Tamaki, it looks to her as if I suddenly disappear inside a door frame.
Thinking her eyes must have deceived her, she runs to the door, but no one is there. Not her niece and not the cats. Only a quiet, dark meadow without the slightest breeze. But the door propped against the stone wall is swinging and creaking, as if blown by wind from an invisible world.
“Suzume…,” she whispers hoarsely. She doesn’t understand what happened, and she can’t believe what she thinks she saw. She’s confused. She had an uneasy premonition that simply coming back here wouldn’t be enough. But this is far beyond what she’s capable of understanding.
Sister, she thinks as she gazes at the door to nowhere. If you’re in there—please protect Suzume.
Eventually, the door stops swinging, and insects begin their soft calls, as if they are secretly beginning their preparations for the coming fall.