My dad is an avid birdwatcher. According to him, he’d decided that if he ever had a daughter, he’d name her after a bird. The morning I was born, he heard a thrush—a tsugumi—chirping on the way to the hospital. I guess the sound of that bird made a big impression on him, so he decided to name me Tsugumi. I think it’s a pretty common, but heartwarming story.
Or rather, it would be if my last name hadn’t been Torano. So my name is Tsugumi Torano. And if you smash it together in Japanese name order, it sounds a lot like toratsugumi, which is a different kind of bird, a White’s thrush. Back in the day they used to be called nuedori. And those birds have a negative image. It lets out an eerie noise before dawn when it’s still dark out: twee...tuuu...tuuu...tuuu.
Its call resembles the sound people make when suffering from respiratory problems (or the sound someone makes right before they die) and is associated with a yokai named nue. It has the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the arms and legs of a tiger, and the tail of a snake. Because of that association, whenever a nuedori is mentioned in waka poetry, it symbolizes someone crying in the shadows, unrequited love, a grieving widow or widower, someone crying so sorrowfully they can barely make a sound, and so on. Basically, it symbolizes intense sadness.
I wouldn’t exactly say it was because my name resembles such an inauspicious bird, but I grew up having problems showing and expressing my emotions to others.
All kinds of thoughts mixed together in my mind, but I was unable to put them into words—or when I did try, it just took too long. In general, when I would talk to someone else, they’d move on to the next subject before I even had the chance to respond. It bummed me out every time it happened, but apparently it came off completely different to other people.
“Nothing ever affects Torano-san.”
“She’s got a really strong sense of self.”
“Yeah, she’s so quiet. She never minds being alone.”
That’s what my classmates always said about me, so I’d just accepted the fact that I was alone. I wasn’t trying to be quiet, I just couldn’t ever keep up with their conversations. And now that introverts and loners were seen as having a strong individuality rather than being looked down on, that must be why they thought of me like that. Not that I could blame them.
I wasn’t great at expressing myself, and I didn’t feel like forcing myself to be around others either. If people thought I was fine being alone, then it was just easier for me to go along with it. So I just flew solo for all of elementary school and junior high. My world was complete with just me. That’s what I thought, anyway...until one day in high school.
◊◊◊
Today was the first day of classes, not long after my high school entrance ceremony. As soon as I walked into the classroom, I saw a lottery box. Apparently we had to draw numbers to decide our seating chart. Every seat had an assigned number, indicated on the chalkboard.
I don’t care where I sit...
I didn’t know anyone in this class, so I didn’t want to sit next to anyone in particular. I drew a number from the box and checked it against the seating chart on the chalkboard. Among six rows of desks, my seat was in the second, third from the left. Not a good seat, but not a bad seat either.
As I sat down, I saw that my classmates had already formed groups and were chatting with each other.
“Hey, what junior high did you go to?”
“Me? Kamisu Third.”
“Oh, so pretty nearby, then! I went to Aonishi.”
“Nice. My name’s Kanon Hanamizawa, by the way.”
“I’m Chikaze Ido. Nice to meet you, Hanamizawa-san.”
A pretty girl with a beautiful smile was chatting with a cool tomboy in the front of the classroom. Even the air around them seemed to come alive as they talked. Girls with good communication skills could make friends with someone right off the bat. Well, maybe they weren’t friends just yet, but they were able to talk to people in a really friendly way, so it was only a matter of time. That was a skill I just didn’t have.
That looks like such a pain... At the same time, I’d been thinking how stifling it must be to have a personality like that. Just like how people thought of loners as strong people, those who had a lot of friends—the popular kids—were seen as weak people who couldn’t live alone.
It was easier for me to be alone, so I didn’t care if other people thought I was a loner, but I’m sure girls like them faced a lot of criticism. I felt sorry for them, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do to help.
Anyway... I took a novel out of my bag. I love reading. It’s the best way to spend time alone, if you ask me. I love reading everything, from hardcovers to light novels. I just like stories. I pay attention to the flow of a story a lot when I read. And when you read enough of them like I do, it’s easy to see how stories change according to the times. Certain themes are popular in certain decades; for example, a few years ago the popular theme was “imagination.” And if a story has a certain ending, the next one that comes out will have an ending that sort of counterbalances that one. I suppose you could say I have a large-scale perspective when it comes to storytelling.
Since I’m human, of course I like some stories better than others, but with the kind of perspective I have, you could find the worth in each one from how it relates to the specific era in which it was written.
I put in my earphones and was about to start reading, when all of a sudden I saw the chair in front of me move with a loud clatter as a boy sat down in front of me.
He looked around and heaved a sigh. Something about that made me feel like he might be a loner like me. That sigh didn’t seem like it was because he wanted to join a friend group. It was like he was sad that he didn’t want to join a friend group.
I felt sympathy for him as I watched him pull a book out of his bag. I guessed he was going to read too.