Book Girl and the Famished Spirit Read online

  I had loved her so much, but I would never see her again…

  “Say, Konoha—do you know how you can get back the things you’ve lost?” Kayano asked soberly, looking straight at me.

  I bunched the front of my shirt in my fist and answered, my voice shaking, “That’s impossible. You can’t get something back once it’s gone.”

  Kayano lowered her eyes ever so slightly and declared with perfect detachment, “No, it’s actually very easy. You just have to reverse time. Then you won’t make the same mistakes you did before.”

  It was like a devil was whispering in my ear.

  If I could reverse time… if I could go back to that day…

  How often had I wished to do exactly that during that interminable winter I spent in bed, the covers pulled over my head?

  If I could go back to how things were before I wrote the novel, could go back to that day Miu threw herself off the roof…

  Please, God—grant me this wish. Please let me go back.

  I didn’t need anything else as long as I didn’t have to lose Miu.

  Please, God.

  But time didn’t reverse itself.

  I was here alone.

  “That’s impossible. Nobody can go back in time.”

  Kayano saw how badly I shook, and her face suddenly saddened. She murmured very quietly, “I see… so you’ve wanted to go back before, too.”

  She slid off the desk and walked toward me. She reached out both arms and gently wrapped them around my head, pulling me to her frail chest.

  I had no idea what emotions inspired that act.

  She only seemed to be very sad, and she was trembling a little. Her thin body was as cool as snow and had a clean scent I’d smelled somewhere before.

  I relinquished myself to the phantom embrace, feeling a faint relief and also a deep ache.

  I wouldn’t have minded if time had frozen forever in that moment.

  But after a little while, Kayano pulled away from me and whispered, “I have to go. Someone is waiting for me.”

  I watched her walk out to the hallway and finally came back to my senses. I still hadn’t said anything. I didn’t want to let her go.

  “W-wait—uh, do… do you want to g-get something to eat?”

  Ugh, what an awful line. Couldn’t I think of anything more original?

  Kayano turned around.

  “I can’t… I only eat the things that he brings me.”

  Her tone kept me at a distance, starkly different from a moment ago when she had embraced me, and she left.

  “I wonder if it’s possible to turn back time,” she whispered.

  It is utterly impossible. It is the act of a demon rebelling against God, but he tried to achieve it. He made a pact with the devil and took her back from the grave. He made the impossible possible, and now she was with him.

  She danced madly through the world of darkness, illuminated by the moon.

  “She is me and I am her.” She said this as if singing a song, every day becoming more like that other girl. With each day, the presence of the other girl grew stronger inside her and the original girl disappeared. The girl who was not her laughed and sang—and loved—with her body and her voice.

  The girl who reached her arms out to him, the girl who whispered to him.

  She appealed to the girl inside her in heartbreaking tones.

  “Please, don’t touch him again. Don’t smile at him. Don’t pursue him.

  “Because I hate him so much I want to kill him.”

  When the week began on Monday, Tohko stormed into my classroom first thing in the morning.

  “Konoha! How could you stand me up like that on Friday after I reminded you!”

  I’d been expecting her visit, but I hadn’t thought she would launch her attack so early in the morning, so I completely missed my chance to get away.

  “Umm… my chronic hiccups suddenly came back, so I had to go to the hospital.”

  “I never heard of you having this condition before! I made three trips to the library while I was waiting for you! I finished a collection of O. Henry short stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa short stories, and a collection of Shin’ichi Hoshi’s ultrashort stories.”

  “Why did you only read short stories?”

  “I picked them on purpose, so I could stop as soon as you got there. But you never came, and 1-800-FL—WERS brought me a huge bouquet of black lilies, and when I got back from the library, there was a big piece of paper taped to the wall of our room that said ‘I’m back’ in red letters, and look—”

  Tohko shoved a note at me. She must have taken it out of the mailbox that morning.

  “Today’s note is more stepped up than before. It even has splatters of blood on it!”

  Red splotches were strewn vividly across the yellowed paper, and the brushstrokes read, “a bird of bad omen,” “painting the walls with his blood,” “its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons.” I felt a little dizzy.

  “And then there’s this, look.”

  There was a string of numbers on the torn strips of ruled paper.

  9-10-17-15-28-17-13-17-15

  23-5-28-17-13-17-15

  25-28-20-5-4-27-10-28-4-21-21-20-28-24-21-17-12-21-4

  I wondered what those numbers really meant. She’d said her name was the clue, but…

  Looking down at the note, I thought back to what had happened over the weekend, and I felt someone’s eyes on my face.

  When I looked up, Kotobuki was glaring at me, her bag still slung over her shoulder.

  Our eyes met accidentally, so I had to try and smile. Her eyes went wide, and she curtly turned her face away in a fluster.

  Geez, why does she hate me so much?

  “Hey, Konoha, what are you smiling and sighing about? What are you looking at?”

  Tohko pinched my nose between her thumb and forefinger.

  Luckily the bell saved me by ringing right then.

  “Arggggh. I’ll be back at lunch! You can’t run away, okay?”

  She turned around several times to remind me and then left.

  “I’m sorry, Tohko.”

  Apologizing under my breath, I quickly retreated to the library when lunch started.

  She had once told me, “It’s so awful going to the library when I’m hungry. I see all those treats lined up in front of me, and all I can do is look at them.” So I had actually expected to be safe there, but then I saw Kotobuki sitting behind the counter and wished I could escape.

  How unlucky can I get today?

  She noticed me, too; then she frowned deeply and gave me a black look.

  The room was air-conditioned, but it suddenly became very hot. I wiped away the nervous sweat that had broken out on my face and hurried past the counter with a vague greeting. It was like being watched by a cobra.

  Kotobuki’s eyebrows hiked up sharply.

  Before she could accost me, I quickly shuffled off to the reading room.

  While I was searching for a seat, I spotted someone unexpected at the window.

  Kayano? No, that’s Amemiya…

  She was paging through a slim hardcover. Her pale face was bent over the book as still and quiet as a lake in winter.

  Breathing as quietly as I could, I approached her.

  “Amemiya?”

  She jumped and looked up at me. The pages of the book slipped out of her fingers, and I caught sight of tiny numbers written over every inch on the back of the cover.

  Amemiya hurriedly closed the book and shrunk back as if afraid.

  Her timid eyes proved that she was Amemiya, not Kayano. She was so bashful. I felt bad for startling her. I smiled at her pleasantly without mentioning what I’d just seen.

  “Hello. Do you remember me?”

  She hugged the book tightly to her chest and nodded.

  “You’re… Inoue, right? Thank you again for what you did…”

  Does she not remember the things that happen when she’s Kayano? Or did she just pretend not
to know? Unable to form a judgment about that, I went on serenely.

  “I’m glad you remember me. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “… Okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  I slid into the seat next to hers. When I’d seen Kayano in the chemistry lab, I’d been too dazzled by the peculiar situation to notice, but seeing her like this I realized that she had gotten even thinner since Tohko and I had carried her to the nurse’s office. Her skin had gone past pale and was now ashen, and the veins in her arms were visible. Her fingers looked like they would snap if she tried to hold up her book.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted you. What are you reading?”

  “The Day Boy and the Night Girl by George MacDonald.”

  “Oh, he writes children’s fantasy novels, right? I’ve read At the Back of the North Wind.”

  That was a lie. I’d watched Tohko joyously devour it and talk all about it, but I only remembered the title.

  “What’s your book about?”

  Amemiya looked down.

  “… It’s about a girl who’s been shut away in a mountain since she was little by an evil witch… who knows nothing but darkness… who meets a boy… who knows nothing but light.”

  “Wow, that sounds interesting. Maybe I should read it, too.”

  Maybe I would be able to get a look at the numbers on the inside cover.

  But Amemiya’s thin shoulders trembled and I saw her tighten her grip on the book, so I gave up on pursuing it any further.

  I pulled back nonchalantly and continued in a light, conversational tone.

  “I love fantasy novels. Stuff like The Chronicles of Narnia or The Neverending Story. Stories about adventures in other worlds have so much imagination. It’s exciting.”

  “… Yes.”

  Amemiya’s lips moved sluggishly.

  “I wish I could go to some other world… like the girl in this book… I wish I could go to the world of light…”

  Her voice was empty, sad, with the despair of resignation in her every word. She sounded as if she was talking to herself.

  Her demeanor was such a contrast to Kayano’s, so meek it pierced my heart. I gazed at Amemiya’s pale cheek and downcast face.

  “Um… is anything bothering you, Amemiya? You can tell me about it if you want to.”

  She raised her lowered lashes ever so slightly and looked at me.

  Her eyes weren’t vacant as they had always been before now; the moment our eyes met, hers brimmed with a depth and melancholy that threatened to suck me in.

  “You’re a good person, Inoue. You… shouldn’t get too involved with me.”

  “Amemiya—”

  She stood up quietly, and the book still hugged to her chest and her head still down, she walked away.

  Her words—I wish I could go to the world of light—echoed again and again in my ears.

  That book she’d been reading… It had looked pretty old and its cover was faded. And the tiny numbers written densely on the inside cover… What could they be?

  On Saturday night, Kayano had been wiping numbers off the wall in the chemistry lab. I was sure those numbers held some critical meaning.

  The hint is my name. K-a-y-a-n-o.

  Could Amemiya read those numbers, too?

  Why did Amemiya turn into Kayano?

  What had made her start doing that?

  Before she’d started living with Kurosaki, Amemiya had been a perfectly ordinary girl who ate and talked with her friends during lunch.

  Why had she become unable to eat?

  Was it related to Kurosaki after all? Was he the evil witch who had sealed her away in the world of darkness?

  … I can’t. I only eat the things that he brings me.

  What Kayano had said bothered me, too.

  And why should I not get involved with Amemiya?

  “Ugh, I don’t get it at all.”

  I leaned my elbows on the desk and clutched my head.

  At first I’d only meant to act as Ryuto’s assistant, but now I was utterly engrossed by the mystery of Kayano and Hotaru.

  I knew it was because of what Kayano had said to me in the chemistry lab.

  Say, Konoha—do you know how you can get back the things you’ve lost?

  She had said it was easy. That all I had to do was reverse time.

  Even though that was actually impossible.

  Did Kayano also have a reason to wish that time would flow backward? Had her wish been granted? If so, then why was she still wandering every night?

  There was no point to this. No matter how much I thought these questions over, I was going around in circles, which only added to the crushing weight on my chest.

  The end of lunch was approaching, so I got up.

  As I passed the counter, I felt a bolt of murderous rage and turned. Kotobuki’s lips were tightly pinched, and she glared at me.

  “I saw that.”

  Her accusatory whisper stopped me cold.

  I reeled. Wh-what? What did she think she saw? What was she so angry about?

  “You’re evil.”

  Huh?

  What was she babbling about? Why was I evil and why was she attacking me? Kotobuki bit down on her lip and looked away in a totally different direction; then she left the counter. Stupefied, I watched her go.

  I have no idea, Kotobuki.

  On her sixteenth birthday, she met someone she had not seen for a long time.

  Someone kind who had showered her unstintingly with love when she had been living in paradise. That person gave her an old book.

  Written inside it were secret words.

  Cursed words that stole from her the future that she had dreamed of maybe someday, and cast her even deeper into the depths of comfortless night.

  There was no hope for salvation. She could not allow herself to hope for it. Sin encrusted her.

  Alone in the classroom, gazing at a world that melted into the darkness that spread over it like black ink, she whispered, “I wish that I could open the door and go to some other world. There, I could live a completely different story than this one.”

  If she could have met the day boy, she might have been able to go back to that warm place from her past.

  “Konoha!”

  Tohko appeared so suddenly that I almost fell over in terror. She had a sulky look on her face and a mop in her hands.

  It was cleanup time after classes. I had gone out to the balcony to wipe the windows with a cloth.

  “What are you doing in my class? And why do you have that mop?” I asked, terrified. Tohko shoved the window open with one hand, her face the very picture of rage.

  “I snuck out in the middle of cleanup because you keep running away from me, Konoha. Why were you picking up girls in the library during lunch?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  My eyes popped. Did she mean when I was talking to Amemiya? I couldn’t think of anything but that. But how did Tohko find out about that?

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know. Nanase told me.”

  “What?!”

  Kotobuki appeared next to Tohko, her arms crossed and lips pursed.

  “I’m sure of it, Tohko. I saw Inoue with my own eyes. I ab-so-lutely saw him chatting up a girl with a smarmy smile on his face.”

  Whoa—Kotobuki had told on me to Tohko? But why? And when did they start calling each other by their first names?

  “That’s not all. Inoue has gone off surrounded by girls before, too.”

  “Oh, is that so? So while I’ve been worrying about the future of the book club and waiting around for him, Konoha has been prancing off on dates with girls. That’s the kind of boy Konoha is. It doesn’t hurt him even a tiny bit if the book club gets attacked by a herd of pigs or if the walls get painted in blood.”

  I interjected quickly.

  “Hold on, you’re making way too many leaps here! Please step out of your fantasy. You’re wrong anyway. I wasn’t fooling around or going on dates.” />
  “Then what were you doing?”

  Tohko’s frown deepened even further, and she looked at me petulantly.

  “W-well…”

  “The fact that he’s stuttering proves that he has a guilty conscience, Tohko.”

  “Hey!”

  “You’re right, Nanase.”

  I couldn’t bear their combined recrimination, so I decided to run.

  “Sorry, I… have something I need to go do.”

  I shoved the cloth into Kotobuki’s hands and ran into the classroom, grabbed my book bag from its hook on the side of my desk, and burst out into the hall.

  “Hey! Konoha!”

  “Coward!”

  I heard their accusatory shouts behind me, but I turned tail and ran.

  I didn’t care how much Kotobuki disliked me, there was no excuse for her to go out of her way to rat me out to Tohko. Man, I bet Tohko’s furious.

  I was waiting for Ryuto in our usual restaurant, feeling depressed, when he walked in escorting a plump little woman in her seventies. Ryuto held the door open for her, and she looked so thrilled and embarrassed that I felt a spasm of horror.

  He couldn’t have picked her up, too!

  My eyes were bugging out as Ryuto introduced the woman glibly.

  “ ’Sup, Konoha. This is Yoshie Wada. She used to be the ultrahousekeeper at Hotaru’s place.”

  She could not fight it any longer.

  That was why she wrote the letters.

  To him and to the other girl and to whatever grand being controlled people’s destinies.

  She wrote the secret letters down in a notebook, then tore them up and dropped them into the mailbox.

  Please understand how I feel.

  Hear my voice.

  Grant this wish.

  I’m scared

  it hurts

  a ghost

  stay away

  25-27-3-28-4-5-10-28-25-4-28-2-5-12-21

  22-5-8-23-25-12-21-28-3-21-28-22-17-10-24-21-8

  25-28-20-5-4-27-10-28-4-21-21-20-28-24-21-17-12-21-4

  When I opened the door to the chemistry lab, Kayano was sitting at one of the desks, staring out the window at the scenery, which was sinking into shadow.

  Her downcast eyes looked desolate and made me think of how Amemiya had looked when I’d seen her in the library at lunchtime.