Spring came, I turned fifteen, and right after that, my left lung collapsed.
It was the third day after I left Tokyo to come to Yomiyama and leech off my grandparents on my mom’s side. I was supposed to start at a middle school here the day after that, despite the fact that it was a little late in the term to be transferring somewhere—and just my luck, it happened the night before.
April 20, 1998.
Monday, which was supposed to be my first day at a new school—a day for me to make a fresh start—turned out to be the first day of my second-ever hospitalization. My first experience had been six months earlier. Just like last time, I’m back because my left lung collapsed.
“They told me you’ll be hospitalized a week, maybe ten days.”
My grandmother, Tamie, arrived at the hospital early that morning. When she gave me the news—and I was already feeling isolated in the bed of the hospital room to which I’d only just been admitted—I fought back a pain in my chest and a suffocating feeling that seemed unlikely to ever subside.
“The doctor said there’s most likely no need for surgery, but they’re going to start a drainage treatment. I believe it was this afternoon.”
“Oh…okay.”
A few hours earlier, when the ambulance brought me in, the suffocating pain in my chest had felt much fiercer. After resting for a bit, I felt as if it was starting to get better. But to be honest, it was still pretty bad. The X-ray image of one of my lungs—shriveled up in a weird twist—flashed through my mind, not that I wanted it to.
“I feel just terrible for you…so soon after you came here!”
“Oh, uh…I’m sorry, Grandma.”
“Now really, there’s nothing for you to feel bad about. You can’t help being ill.”
My grandmother looked into my face and smiled, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened twice as much. She had turned sixty-three this year, but she still seemed sprightly and was very kind to her grandson. This, even though we had almost never spoken alone together or been so close to one another.
“Um…what about Reiko? She wasn’t late to work, was she?”
“She’s just fine. She stays focused, that girl. She went home and then left at the same time she always does.”
“Could you tell Reiko that, um, I’m sorry for all the trouble…?”
Late the night before, out of nowhere, I was struck by familiar symptoms. There was a disturbing gurgling sensation coming from inside my chest, and that unique, splitting pain, and then the tightness. The moment I realized It’s happening again? I’d run with the SOS, half-panicked, to Reiko, who had still been awake in the living room.
There were eleven years between my mother, who had died, and this younger sister of hers—which makes her my aunt. As soon as I told her what was happening, she called an ambulance. And she even went with me to the hospital.
Thank you, Reiko.
I owe you so much.
I wanted to proclaim my gratitude in my loudest voice, but in my condition, I was in too much pain to even think about doing that. Not to mention that I had trouble talking to her face-to-face…I dunno, I just get really nervous.
“I brought you a change of clothes. If there’s anything else you need, you let me know.”
“…Thank you.”
I thanked my grandmother in a rasping voice as she set a large paper bag down beside the bed. The pain seemed to increase when I shifted inattentively, so I lifted my chin slightly toward her and kept my head on the pillow.
“Grandma, um…what about my dad?”
“I haven’t told him yet. Do you suppose Yosuke is in India by now? I’m not sure how to reach him. I’ll ask Reiko tonight.”
“That’s okay; I’ll get in touch with him. If you just bring me the cell phone I left in my room…”
“Oh-ho, is that so?”
My dad’s name is Yosuke Sakakibara. He works for some famous university in Tokyo doing research for cultural anthropology or socioecology or something like that. He became a professor in his early forties, so he must be a pretty exceptional researcher. Still, I can’t help harboring some pretty strong doubts about how exceptional he is as a father.
Anyway, he doesn’t live at home anymore.
He casts off his only son and leaves the house empty while he flies around Japan and to other countries, doing I don’t even know what—fieldwork, I guess. Thanks to that, ever since elementary school, I’ve had this weird confidence that my ability to keep house, at least, is better than any of my fellow students’.
Like my grandmother said, my dad had gone to India the previous week for work. The job had come up with practically no notice during spring vacation. He would be staying there and devoting himself to surveys and research activities for almost a year. Those are the basic circumstances that led me to being taken into my grandparents’ home in Yomiyama with hardly any warning.
“Koichi, are you and your father getting along?” my grandmother asked.
“Sure, I guess,” I replied. Even if I thought it was tough having him for a father, it’s not as if I hated him.
“Still, Yosuke is such a dutiful man!” She sounded as if she was speaking mostly to herself. “All this time has passed since Ritsuko died, and yet he still hasn’t remarried. And he does so much to help us, too, at the least little word from us.”
Ritsuko is my mom’s name. Fifteen years ago—the year I was born—she passed away at the young age of twenty-six. My father, Yosuke, was ten years older than her.
From what I’d heard, my dad first saw my mom while he was working as a lecturer at his school, and she was one of his students. He won her over almost as soon as they met. “You work fast,” one of his old friends said when visiting our house one time, teasing my dad relentlessly. The guy seemed drunk.
It was hard to conceive that my dad had lived without any women in his life ever since my mom died. I admit I’m speaking as his son, but he’s a talented researcher, and even though he’s fifty-one years old, he’s a youthful man with a sweet personality who’s pretty handsome. He’s got a pretty good position in society and makes decent money, and since he’s single on top of all that, I can’t believe he’s not more popular.
Was he fulfilling an obligation to his deceased wife? Or being considerate of my feelings? Whatever it was, it had been long enough. I wanted him to get married again sometime and stop pushing the work of managing his household off on his son. That probably accounted for half of my feelings on the subject.