By some miracle, I regained sight of Mizuo. I saw her squeeze free of the riot and escape down a narrow side street between two multipurpose buildings. With a burst of determination, I also pulled free of the fray and hurried down the same side street. But I was too late. She was gone. I stood panting, white breath pouring from my open mouth, lost for what to do next.
Something cold brushed my cheek, and I looked up to find flecks of white gently falling from the tiny strip of visible black sky.
“Mizuo!” I called into the surroundings.
There was no response.
The frenzied cries—Eejanaika!—continued on the street behind me, an unending chorus. But at least I couldn’t hear the faintest strain of any Christmas song.
For a while, I simply stood there. At some point, Shikama casually sauntered in from the main street. Despite being the mastermind of the disturbance, he wore the look of an innocent bystander. He seemed neither regretful nor triumphant. His hands were stuffed into his coat pockets. His expression was unconcerned. Flat. The bandage on his chin had come partly loose and now dangled freely.
“Eejanaika,” he offered listlessly, reaching a hand up to re-tuck the bandage as if he’d done so a dozen times already.
“Oh, don’t get me started,” I spat back.
“Hmph. Well said.”
Shikama gave a slight chuckle, then added, “I wonder what happened to Takayabu and Ido. Think they got out safely?”
“I imagine so.”
Shikama followed my gaze up to the sky and muttered, “Blast. It’s snowing.”
And then, as if he had already come to accept it, he added, “Well, I guess that’s to be expected.”
“I think I’ll head home,” I said, lighting a smoke.
Shikama patted the bag slung across his shoulder.
“I’m going to find a table at McDonald’s and study for a while.”
Apparently, he’d been carrying his textbooks around all evening.
“When do you suppose we’ll see each other next?” I asked.
“You’ll be at the year-end party, yes? I was informed by Miss Uemura that you would be going.”
“Yes. I’ll be there. See you then.”
“Sounds good.”
“Take care,” I said.
“You too,” he responded, and then added, “I think I’ll go this way.”
He traipsed farther down the dim, narrow alley in search of a place to study in peace. He began to hum and then to sing, his voice echoing between the narrow walls.
Lo, the pink petals are a shroud of mist
above the students on the eastern bench.
The moon is a pearl in the distant sky
casting its soft glow on Yoshida’s peak.
It was the old school song.
“What in hell’s name would possess you to start singing that?” I shouted after him.
Shikama shrugged off my comment, still humming as he slipped through a tiny gap at the far end of the alley. And then he was gone.
From off to one side came the ring of a train station bell signaling a departure.
✦ ✦ ✦
As I sat upon the gently rocking Eizan, I reminisced upon her many qualities.
I remembered the way she looked as she stared up at the Tower and the sound of her voice as we walked the banks of the Kamo together. “Let’s set some ground rules,” she’d said to me. “No matching outfits. If I ever propose that we dress alike, I give you full permission to knock me unconscious.”
I recalled our visit to the Lake Biwa Canal Museum, where we gazed on with smiles as the water gently gurgled by. Her birthday gift to me, a copy of A Reference Guide to Human Deaths. The time she pretended to be a bipedal robot on the train platform, lurching across the concrete with a most peculiar gait.
I thought about how she would put an ice cube in her miso soup, on account of her tongue being quick to burn. I remembered the time she absentmindedly cooked a stack of twenty dorayaki treats.
I saw her engrossed in the ten quires of Uji—that final stretch of The Tale of Genji I never managed to complete.
I remembered the way she liked to dump a big scoop of rice into her corn soup. The elaborate plot descriptions she’d give of whatever comic she was currently into. The invitations to watch VHS recordings of her favorite stand-up comedians. The way she’d sink with sadness after a mean-spirited outburst. The way she’d lose herself among the stalls of the open-air used book market at the Shimogamo Shrine. The time she ordered grilled sparrow and declared, “Now I’m a real Kyoto woman.”
The way she often fell ill and had to stay in bed. The time I bought her eel liver to bolster her health, only for her to break out in hives instead. The night she coldly rejected my maneki-neko gift and me. The way snow stuck to her bangs during the first snowfall of that winter we were together.
The way she’d ask “What is it about me that you love?” just to see me fume. The way she stood beside me when I was depressed and didn’t know what to do—and the way it made her feel lost and uncertain, too. The way she held her tongue when I grew irritated and hurled angry words.
The times we walked along the banks of the Kamo wrapped in darkness, the times we walked the neighborhoods near Shimogamo under the night sky, and the times we walked through Commemorative Park together in the bright of morning. The way her eyes sparkled with curiosity when she saw something new. Her gentle laughter, like she was hiding some great secret.
At times, she fell silent. At times, she grew angry. She cried. She slept. She curled up into a ball like a cat and left me behind each night to dream of the Tower of the Sun.