Chapter 1

PROLOGUE The Story I Heard from You Beneath a rainy March sky, the long whistle signals that the ferry is leaving port. As the ship’s enormous hull plows through the seawater, the heavy vibrations travel through my seat to the rest of me. My ticket is for the second-class cabin, the one closest to the bottom of the ship. The voyage to Tokyo will take more than ten hours, and we’ll be arriving at night. This is the second time in my life that I’ve made this very trip, on this ferry. I stand up, heading for the stairs to the deck terrace. The first time was two and a half years ago. After what happened while I was in the city, rumors about me had started circulating at school: They say he’s got a record and I hear he’s still wanted by the cops. Being the subject of gossip didn’t bother me (in fact, I’d be more surprised if I wasn’t), but I hadn’t told anyone on the island about what had happened in Tokyo that summer. I’d said a few things here and there, but I hadn’t told a soul—not my parents, not my friends, not the police—about the really important stuff. Now I’m headed for Tokyo again, with everything that happened that summer inside me. Now that I’m eighteen, I’m going to settle there for good. And I’m going to see her again. Those thoughts always create heat behind my ribs. My cheeks are flushing, little by little. I want to be out in the sea wind as soon as possible, and I start climbing the stairs faster. Up on the deck terrace, the cold air strikes me full in the face, bringing rain with it. I draw a deep breath, trying to drink it all in. The wind is still chilly, but it’s filled with the promise of spring. I’ve finally graduated from high school—and the reality of it belatedly strikes home, like a notification coming in late. I rest my elbows on the deck railing, gazing at the receding island, then shift my focus to the windswept sky. Countless raindrops dance through the air for as far as I can see, way off into the distance. Just then—I shudder, breaking out in goose bumps all over. It’s happening again. I squeeze my eyes shut involuntarily. As I stand there, stock-still, the rain hits my face, and the sound of it echoes in my ears. For the past two and a half years, the rain has been a constant presence. It’s like a pulse that never stops, no matter how long you hold your breath. Like the light seeping through your eyelids, no matter how tightly you squeeze them shut. Like a heart that never falls truly silent, no matter how you try to calm it. Exhaling slowly, I open my eyes. Rain. The black surface of the ocean undulates as if it’s taking a breath, sucking the rain down into its bottomless depths. It’s as though the sky and sea are conspiring together to raise the level of the ocean, for the sake of some practical joke. I’m getting scared. A shiver wells up from deep inside me. I feel like I’m going to be ripped apart and scattered. I squeeze the railing. Breathe deeply through my nose. And, as always, I remember her. Her wide eyes, her vibrant expression, the energetic and dynamic tone of her voice, the long hair she wore in twin ponytails. And I think, It’s all right. She’s here. She’s alive, in Tokyo. As long as she’s here, I have a firm link to this world. “—So don’t cry, Hodaka.” That was what she said that night, in the hotel we’d fled to in Ikebukuro. The sound of the rain on the roof was like a distant drum. The scent of the same shampoo I’d used; her gentle, all-forgiving voice; her skin, gleaming pale in the darkness—they’re all so vivid that suddenly, I forget I’m not still there. Maybe we’re actually in that hotel right now, and I’ve only imagined my future self on a ferry, like a spell of déjà vu. Maybe yesterday’s graduation ceremony and the ferry are all illusions, and the real me is still in bed at that hotel. When I wake up in the morning, the rain will have stopped, she’ll be next to me, the world will be as it always was, and the ordinary daily routine will start up again. The whistle blows sharply. No, that’s not true. I focus on the texture of the iron railing, and the smell of the tide, and the vague silhouette of the island that has almost vanished over the horizon. It’s not true; this isn’t that night. That happened a long time ago. This me, the one rocking on the ferry, is the real one. I’ll think about it, really think about it, and remember it all from the very beginning, I think as I glare at the rain. Before I see her again, I have to understand what happened to us. Or even if I can’t understand it, I at least have to think it through. What did happen to us? What did we choose? And what should I say to her? It all started— Yeah, it was probably that day. The day she first saw it. What happened that day, what she told me about, was the beginning of everything. * * * Apparently, her mother hadn’t opened her eyes in months. The small hospital room was filled with the rhythmic beeping of vital sign monitors, the whoosh of a ventilator at work, and the persistent sound of rain drumming on the window—along with that hushed atmosphere peculiar to hospital rooms that have been occupied for a long time, cut off from the rest of the world. She sat on a stool beside the bed, squeezing her mother’s painfully bony hand. She watched the oxygen mask turn pale and foggy at regular intervals, then looked at her mother’s eyelashes, which were always lowered now. Beneath the crushing weight of her anxiety, she prayed constantly. Let Mom wake up. Let a powerful gust of wind blow in like a hero coming to save the day, blast away the melancholy and the worry and the rain clouds and all the other dark, heavy things, and let our family walk with smiles under sunny skies again, all three of us. Her hair stirred softly, and she heard the faint sound of water dripping close to her ear. She raised her head. She’d thought the window was closed all the way, but the curtain was swaying slightly. The sky beyond the windowpane drew her eyes upward; the sun had broken through. The rain was still falling in earnest, but a thin ray of light was reaching down through a small gap in the clouds, illuminating a point on the ground. She strained her eyes to see better. Among the buildings covering the earth as far as she could see, the roof of one lone building shone, all by itself, like an actor in the spotlight. The next thing she knew, as if someone had called to her, she was dashing out of the hospital room. The mixed-use building was abandoned. The structures around it were shiny and brand-new, but this particular one was brown and decrepit, as if time had left it behind. All sorts of rusty, faded signs were stuck here and there around the building: BILLIARDS and HARDWARE STORE and EEL and MAH-JONGG. She looked up through her vinyl umbrella; the sunlight was definitely highlighting this one. When she peeked around its side, she found a small parking lot and a set of corroded, dilapidated emergency stairs leading up to the roof. It’s like a puddle of light. Once she’d climbed to the top of the stairs, she was captivated for a few moments by what she saw. The roof, which was surrounded by a railing, was just about half the size of a twenty-five-meter pool. The floor tiles were cracked and falling to pieces, and the whole surface was covered in green weeds. At the very back, a small torii gate stood quietly, cradled in thick foliage and perfectly highlighted by the ray from the gap in the clouds. In the sun’s spotlight, the vermillion of the gate sparkled with little droplets. It was the only bright spot in a world hazy with rain. Slowly, she crossed the roof toward the torii. The rain had soaked the summer weeds, and every time she stepped on them, she heard a soft crunching sound and felt a pleasant springiness beneath her feet. Beyond the curtain of rain was a forest of skyscrapers, pale and misty. The twittering of songbirds filled the air; there must have been a nest somewhere nearby. The distant rumbling of the Yamanote Line mingled with it faintly, like a noise filtering through from another world. She set her umbrella on the ground, and the chill of the rain stroked her smooth cheeks. On the other side of the torii was a small stone shrine, with small purple flowers growing thickly around it. Nearly buried in the flowers were two Obon decorations that someone must have placed there: a horse made of a cucumber and an ox made of eggplant, with thin bamboo-strip legs. Almost unconsciously, she put her hands together. Then she made her fervent wish: Let the rain stop. She slowly closed her eyes, then walked through the torii gate. Let Mom wake up and let us walk under clear skies together. As soon as she passed under the gate, the air changed. The sound of the rain suddenly cut out. When she opened her eyes—there was blue sky all around her. She was floating high, high above the earth, in the midst of a powerful wind. No—she was falling. Wind coiled around her, moaning lower and deeper than she’d ever heard it. With every exhalation, her breath turned white and froze, sparkling in the deep blue. Even so, she felt no fear. It was an odd sensation, like a waking dream. When she looked down at her feet, she saw a multitude of cumulonimbus clouds formed like enormous heads of cauliflower. Each of them must have been miles wide, forming a magnificent sky forest. Suddenly, she realized that the color of one cloud was changing. On the flat top created by the atmospheric boundary, patches of green were beginning to appear. She stared. It was almost like a grassland. On the top of the cloud, invisible to anyone on the surface of the earth, rustling greenery was appearing and vanishing. Around it, she noticed swarms of some small creature. “…Fish?” The swarms indeed resembled schools of fish, undulating in a leisurely way, sketching geometric spirals. As she fell, she watched them intently. Uncountable numbers of them were swimming over the cloud-top plain… Suddenly, something brushed her fingertips. Startled, she looked at her hand. She was right; they were fish. Their transparent little bodies slipped through her fingers and hair like wind given weight. Some had long fins trailing behind them, others were as round as jellyfish, and still others were thin, like killifish. The sun streamed through all their many shapes, making them shine like prisms. Before she knew it, she was surrounded. The endless blue, the white clouds, the rustling greenery, the fish shining in all the colors of the rainbow—she was in a strange, beautiful sky world, one she’d never heard of or imagined. Before long, the rain clouds blanketing the world below her unraveled and melted away, and the never-ending streets of Tokyo appeared. Every single building, every single car, every single pane of glass shone proudly in the sunlight. The town seemed to have been reborn, washed by the rain, and she slowly rode the wind down into it. Gradually, curiously, she could feel herself becoming one with everything. She simply knew, in a sensation more fundamental than words, that she was a part of this world. She was wind and water, blue and white, mind and wish. A peculiar happiness and keen sorrow spread all through her. Then, slowly, as if she were sinking deep into her futon, her awareness dimmed and faded… * * * “That view I saw back then might all have been a dream,” she’d once told me, “but—” It wasn’t a dream, though. We know that now. Later on, we both saw the same sight together. A sky world known to none but us. For better or worse, during that summer I spent with her, in the sky over Tokyo, we changed the shape of the world forever.