At school, Rukana never said so much as a word to Itoha. That would be dangerous. She couldn’t risk her classmates thinking the two of them were friends. She only ever met with Itoha outside of school, far away from prying eyes. Itoha never asked why. Rukana had judged her correctly: She wasn’t foolish enough to ask questions that she already knew the answer to.
Itoha was a strange person, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d dig in the mud for insect larvae with glee and catch butterflies and moths with her bare hands, but she always washed her hands with soap afterward, and she bathed every day, so she wasn’t dirty at all. She carefully brushed her pitch-black hair, leaving it perfectly straight and glossy.
Itoha only ever wore black and blue clothing, a little different from the sort of clothes most people wore. It wasn’t just her outerwear, either—when Rukana peeked at her gym clothes, underwear, and socks, she found that the majority of them hadn’t come from a store. Her grandmother was quite the seamstress, it seemed, and made Itoha her black and blue clothing on request. Her grandmother had also made the blue ribbon she always wore out of a piece of scrap fabric.
There was a particular species of butterfly called a blue admiral. They weren’t particularly rare—you could find them all across eastern and southern Asia. They could even be found in Japan, from all the way up north in Hokkaido to the Ryukyu Islands in the south.
Itoha loved bugs in general, butterflies and moths in particular, and blue admirals above all others. She’d once shown Rukana the blue admirals she’d caught herself. Not all of them were alive. She also had a number of them preserved as specimens. In fact, her home was full of insect specimens, many of which she’d collected and mounted herself. Itoha knew all about each and every one of them. Sometimes, while describing their ecology, she was so overcome with emotion that she would end up in tears.
“I like blue admirals more than any of the other ones, though,” she’d say. “I’ve loved them ever since the first time I saw one!”
Blue admirals weren’t especially rare, but they were somewhat unusual. The bright blue pattern that ran across their otherwise black wings, which was revealed when they took flight, was particularly eye-catching.
“They’re so pretty,” said Rukana. It wasn’t lip service—she genuinely felt that way. There was just something about that black and blue coloration, about how the blue stood out so vividly against the black background. That was why Itoha wore black and blue clothes. It was why she took such good care of her black hair and only ever adorned it with a blue ribbon. It was all an expression of love for the blue admiral butterfly.
“But the underside of their wings is completely different,” Itoha continued. When she talked about blue admirals, her usually pallid face grew flushed with excitement. Her eyes stopped looking like deep, dark pits. They practically glimmered with passion and glee.
When blue admirals closed their wings, it seemed, you could only see their undersides, which looked almost like withered leaves. As a result, it could be quite difficult to spot one if it landed on a tree. That side of their wings wasn’t pretty by any measure. Instead, they were unobtrusive. A form of camouflage. A trait that the blue admiral species had attained through evolution for the sake of protecting itself. Itoha’s undergarments tended to be either beige or a dark, subdued color. The lining of the blue and black clothes her grandmother made for her was always a dark brown.
“I’m a blue admiral.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Between her regular piano and ballet lessons, Rukana would go over to Itoha’s house from time to time. Not often. Just every once in a while. Itoha’s parents both had full-time jobs and didn’t come home until seven or eight in the evening. Itoha used to spend weekday afternoons at her grandmother’s house, but after she started her second year of elementary school, she’d spent that time at home alone.
“Don’t you get lonely?” Rukana had asked once. It was a very trite question, and looking back, Rukana was embarrassed that she’d asked it at all.
“No, I don’t. I’m fine,” Itoha had replied.
Insect collecting and specimen making weren’t Itoha’s only obsessions. She also loved to draw. The day Rukana asked her if she got lonely, a big sheet of paper had been laid out on the living room table. Itoha had been drawing an insect on it—a type of moth known as an Agrius, found in Central and South America. Itoha had used a mixture of colored pencil, crayon, and watercolor to render the moth in almost photorealistic detail. She showed Rukana a picture of a swallowtail butterfly she’d drawn when she was in the first grade, as well. It was just as impressive—apparently, she’d been a capable artist even back then. Itoha didn’t make any claims about her own skill level, but it was clear to Rukana that she had incredible talent.
“I show them to my grandma sometimes, but I can never, ever let my parents see them,” Itoha explained.
She’d shown her mother one of them once and had gotten a very poor reaction. “What is that? Disgusting,” she’d said. Itoha had broken down in tears and torn the drawing to pieces. Ever since then, she’d kept her hobby a secret from her parents. She’d obtained all her art supplies by begging her grandmother to buy them for her.
“I run out so quickly, though,” she said. “I have to use them really carefully.”
Rukana used her savings to buy a set of seventy-two colored pencils, which she gave to Itoha for her birthday. Itoha was so happy she jumped with joy—literally. She jumped so many times that Rukana wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Why’re you jumping?” she asked.
“This pack has seventy-two colors, so I thought I’d try jumping seventy-two times,” Itoha explained. “Thank you so much, Shizukudani!”
“Just call me Rukana.”
Itoha’s jumping came to a sudden stop. “Huh?”
“I mean, I already call you Itoha, right? So you can call me Rukana.”