Wearing a yukata was nice and everything—the crisp cotton was perfect for summer’s heat—but it loosened up just from walking around. I thought I had put it on properly, but still it came undone at the front. This always happened to me. Dope, Yukihiko said.
Don’t call me a dope! I exclaimed. But no matter how I pleaded, Yukihiko wouldn’t stop. I didn’t know what to do with my yukata that just got looser and looser, so Yukihiko stood behind me, encircling my torso with his arms. He untied my obi sash.
“Hold still. Cross it over properly in front,” Yukihiko said. I stood there idly as he adjusted the crossing of each side of the yukata. He took the untied obi in his hands and stretched it out with a snap.
“Your obi was twisted.”
“Really?” I asked.
“You’re the one who tied it?”
“I thought I tied it neatly.”
“There was nothing neat about it. You’re hopeless,” Yukihiko said, his arms surrounding my torso again as he tied the obi for me. He pulled the knot tight, the fabric of the sash making a pleasant squeaking sound.
“Thank you, Mr. Wardrobe Assistant,” I said, imitating a Kyoto accent, and Yukihiko frowned. He may have been standing behind me and so I couldn’t see him frown, but there was no question that there was a frown on his face.
“I’m not your assistant!”
“Yukihiko, you’re good at everything,” I said. Yukihiko came around in front of me. And indeed, he was frowning. Although his expression was soft. The sweetness in his face, his tidiness, the precision with which he had tied my obi for me—these were Yukihiko’s distinguishing characteristics.
Women liked Yukihiko. When I called him on the phone late at night, he took forever to answer. The phone would ring and ring, but if I was patient, he’d finally pick up on the twelfth ring with a low and deep “Yes?” At night Yukihiko was always fielding calls from one girl or another.
“I have another call,” he’d say to the girl on the phone. “Gotta go. Good to talk to you,” Yukihiko would sign off. This may have accounted for why it took so many rings for him to answer. When he finally switched over to my call on the twelfth ring, he’d automatically reply, “Yes?” I bet he used the same voice with every girl. It was an all-purpose monotone. A voice he could use in any situation—when having a fight with a girl, when making a move on her, or even when he was breaking up with her.
Once he knew it was me calling, Yukihiko’s voice got a little deeper. “Ah, is that you, Kanoko?” he’d say with a sigh. And then his voice would revert back to the smooth monotone reserved for girls. “What’s up with you today?” he’d ask.
I’d murmur my assent. Not much really going on with me. What about you, Yukihiko? How’ve you been?
“Oh, you know, I’m fine,” Yukihiko would reply. Sometimes I could hear the sound of a call waiting, but Yukihiko never clicked over while he was on the phone with me. No matter how frivolous the conversation was or how endlessly it went on, he never clicked over.
“Manami doesn’t get angry?” I tried asking Yukihiko, just once. Manami was Yukihiko’s girlfriend. A beautiful woman three years older than him.
“If she calls and it doesn’t go to voicemail, and you don’t pick up on call waiting, won’t she know that you’re talking to someone?” I asked.
Yukihiko laughed. “I’m the one who calls Manami.”
“She doesn’t call you?”
“Nope.”
Hmm, I murmured, and quickly changed the subject. I was always the one who called Yukihiko. He almost never called me. Even when Yukihiko and I had been boyfriend and girlfriend, I had always called him. Yukihiko had always been the one waiting.
Yukihiko and I had broken up five years ago, shortly after I graduated from university. I was the one who suggested we break up. When I told him I had met someone else, Yukihiko just hung his head for a moment before looking up at me and saying, “Well then, I guess there’s nothing I can do.”
I had expected him to put up more of a fight, and then I felt as though I had been sidestepped. Not that it was a big deal, since I had been the one to suggest it in the first place, but yeah—I’d been dodged.
Even now, whenever Yukihiko and I are together, people usually asked if we are boyfriend and girlfriend. One time when an acquaintance asked me, I denied it categorically, though with an odd look on my face. Even I knew that my denial had been just a tad too categorical. On the other hand, when people asked Yukihiko the same thing, he would reply, “Don’t I wish.” With a smile. Implying plenty of assurance.
My obi now tightly knotted, I stood behind Yukihiko and watched as he locked the door to our room. Yukihiko looked dashing in his yukata. On me, the yukata provided by the ryokan where we were staying immediately sagged and drooped, but somehow Yukihiko always managed to keep his looking crisp, as if it were still brand new.
Yukihiko turned to me as I stood idly in the hallway. “You there! What are you waiting for?” he called out. Caught off guard, I looked up in surprise. Yukihiko’s face wore a combination of scowl and smile.
“You’ve made no progress at all!” Yukihiko chided, taking my hand.
“That’s not true,” I replied, and Yukihiko laughed mockingly, but his voice was sweet.
“Hurry up, then!” Yukihiko said, letting go of my hand. It had been so long since Yukihiko had held my hand—this was the first time since we had broken up five years ago. I had been certain that being touched by Yukihiko would send me into a fluster, but that didn’t happen.
Yukihiko and I had come to stay at this ryokan for a night. The truth was that I had planned to be here with my boyfriend. Something had come up at the last minute and he wasn’t able to come. I had hit up my girlfriends, but they were all busy—either they were married, or spending time with their own boyfriends, or studying for a qualifying exam. As a last resort—and half in jest—I mentioned the idea to Yukihiko.
“Sure, I’ll go,” Yukihiko had replied, as if it were no big deal.
What about Manami? I asked, and Yukihiko laughed.
“Manami is busy. She works weekends too,” he said. Manami was Yukihiko’s boss. Three years older, beautiful, she was not only his boss, but his lover. Yukihiko referred to her as “top-notch.”
I strained my ear to tell whether or not Yukihiko’s laugh betrayed a tinge of loneliness at not being able to spend weekends with Manami, but I couldn’t be sure over the phone. His voice had the same soft, all-purpose monotone as always.
The meal was great. The menu at this ryokan had been created to complement Japanese saké. I like saké, so it follows that I enjoy cuisine that pairs well with it. There were large plates of sashimi, daringly heaped with Japanese sea bass and bonito. There were also raw whelks and kohada gizzard shad, tightened with salt and vinegar. All accompanied with plenty of delicate and aromatic iwanori seaweed.
“This is modorigatsuo, the bonito that has returned for the autumn,” I said, and Yukihiko nodded indifferently.
“The meals at these kinds of inns are good but they’re pretty standard,” he said in reply.
“There’s nothing standard about it—there are subtle distinctions.”
“Um-hmm.”
With this murmured response, Yukihiko reached for a piece of rolled omelette with his chopsticks. Yukihiko barely drank at all. He could opine about ice cream, or ganache, or bean-jam buns, but if you tried to have a conversation with him about the refreshing first sip of beer, you would get nowhere. My boyfriend was a drinker. We had chosen this ryokan specifically because we’d heard the food was good. It made me wonder what kind of places Yukihiko and Manami went to when they travelled together.
Manami was the type of woman who could drink in moderation but who also enjoyed dessert. I had dinner with the two of them after they became an item. How had I gotten myself into such a situation? I was not such an idiot to have brazenly inserted myself into an old boyfriend’s date with his new girlfriend—that had not been my intention—but somehow it was how things ended up.
Manami was polite from start to finish—her cheerfulness was resolute. She didn’t clutch Yukihiko’s hand under the table, nor did she ever whisper to him any prompts about leaving—not even when I thanked them at the end of the evening. We all behaved perfectly amicably, extending our meal over three different venues.
“I don’t know how you can imbibe so much fluid,” Yukihiko had commented to me, after settling his stomach with a ginger ale.
“As long as it’s saké, there’s no limit. Right?” I responded. I had been seeking assent from Manami, but she merely nodded in a modest and ambiguous manner. The gesture of her head was utterly restrained—refuting neither Yukihiko’s opinion nor my own. As I gazed into Manami’s eyes, moist like those of an herbivorous animal, I somehow felt quite sorry for her.
“What is it you like about Yukihiko?” I asked Manami. I was definitely being bitchy. I felt terribly contemptuous, but whether it was directed towards Manami, or towards Yukihiko, or towards the world in general, I wasn’t sure. When I start to pity someone, my contempt knows no bounds.
“Well . . . ” Manami tilted her head.
“Cut it out—don’t pick a fight,” Yukihiko said from the sidelines, but I paid him no heed.
“I mean, I’m sure that when it comes to men, Manami, you have much better options,” I went on.
With a grave expression, Manami considered this for a moment, and then she replied, “I don’t think of it in terms of Yukihiko’s faults or assets.”
I may have emitted a sound of surprise.
“I think I would love Yukihiko no matter what kind of person he was.”
Manami smiled a beautiful smile. I was clobbered. How was it that a person like her existed? An attitude at the perfect temperature. Meticulously chosen words. And always, her demeanor remained unruffled.
I decided that I would hate Manami, from that moment on. But I couldn’t. Manami was too reasonable in the face of hatred. And pride wouldn’t allow me to hate Yukihiko’s girlfriend. I scoffed—Pride in what? I scoffed.
After we had finished our meal, Yukihiko and I went out to the beach. We donned haori jackets over our yukata. In this town on the Pacific Ocean, the temperature was the slightest bit warmer than in Tokyo. Still, the evening breeze was cool as it caressed our cheeks. We could see fires for luring fish at night, burning on the boats offshore.
“They must be fishing for squid.”
“Probably,” Yukihiko replied nonchalantly.
Since he and I had broken up, Yukihiko seemed to have become more and more attractive to women. You’re so popular, I had teased him, but Yukihiko always shook his head.
It’s not that I’m popular, it’s that they’re lonely, he replied. You fool, I wanted to shout at him. You sound like the leader of a religious cult. But I couldn’t bring myself to yell at Yukihiko. Because no matter what, I’d always be the one to call him up on the phone. Even when I had a boyfriend, or despite the fact that work was going along fine, or if I had plenty of friends to talk to—the night would wear on and I’d end up calling Yukihiko.
“Aren’t there squid that are luminescent?” Yukihiko said.
“You mean firefly squid?”
“Right, right—fireflies.”
“Not fireflies—firefly squid.”
“One time, someone made me eat one of those fireflies while it was still alive.”
The air was moving in my direction from behind Yukihiko. The scent of soap wafted from Yukihiko’s body.
“Sounds delicious.”
“You eat it right away, one that’s just been swimming right before your eyes.”
“But wasn’t it delicious?”
“It was good.”
But I can’t do that kind of thing, Yukihiko said.
What do you mean, that kind of thing? I asked.
That kind of thing, Yukihiko repeated.
“Wait a minute, Yukihiko—are you sentimental?” I asked.
Yeah, I guess so, Yukihiko replied, in a deep and soft voice. The scent of soap radiated from him again.
I was suddenly seized by an urge to touch him. Yukihiko’s supple fingers. His warm palms. There on the seashore at night, I gently reached out my hand toward Yukihiko. Just as I was about to touch him, he spoke again.
You’ve always been that way, Kanoko. Calm and casual about sheer brutality.
The tide came in quietly. Yukihiko and I were sitting on a piece of driftwood.
I could feel the warmth of the driftwood through the thin cotton of my yukata. The heat was leftover from the day’s sunshine.
A tiny crab scurried over my foot, clad in the inn’s sandals I had slipped on.
The beach was illuminated by the roadway lighting. Every so often a heavy truck passed by on the secondary highway that ran along the shoreline. The dim light that surrounded us where we were sitting did not reach as far as the water’s edge. We could only sense the waves advancing and retreating in the darkness.
I gazed at Yukihiko’s profile in the gauzy light. His skin was rougher now, compared to when he was in his twenties. His cheekbones were pronounced. His beard had gotten thicker too. I was thinking about what he had said to me earlier. Was I really brutal? Had I always been?
I couldn’t remember much of the details from when Yukihiko and I were boyfriend and girlfriend. I had hardly been thinking about anything, back then. Yukihiko had loved me, he had wanted to sleep with me, he had wanted to make me happy—I had taken each of these things as a given. It had never even occurred to me that they bordered on miraculous.
I loved Yukihiko. I loved my father. I loved my mother. I loved my cat Kuro. I loved the newborn baby from the house next door. I loved the smell of sunshine on clean laundry. I loved skipping school on rainy days. I loved Yukihiko in the same way I loved these things. Yet I wasn’t able to remember why I had gone and fallen in love with someone who wasn’t him.
Kanoko, you’re like a bird in the sky, Yukihiko had once said to me, about three months after we had broken up.
Ever since right after we ended things, we had maintained the same close friendship that we had now.
What do you mean by that? I had asked him.
Birds, you know, they’re dependent upon the wind, right? When the southern breeze begins to blow, they ride the wind to fly north, and when the northern wind blows, they return to the south. Whenever the wind changes, they forget all about everything that happened up until yesterday, and happily fly off, twittering all the way. Yukihiko chuckled as he gave this explanation.
I am not a bird, I had replied indignantly. But while Yukihiko had been talking, I had found myself feeling more and more like his foolish little bird that happily thinks of nothing at all.
See? That’s you, Kanoko. You were like that when we were together, and you’re still like that now, Yukihiko had been staring at my bangs as he spoke.
I’ve always hated my forehead, so back then I used to wear bangs. When we had been boyfriend and girlfriend, Yukihiko would constantly try to sweep them back. Then he thought it was amusing to criticize my exposed forehead. I’d squirm to avoid his efforts to push my hair aside, but often found myself lying under Yukihiko, and we’d end up having sex.
Yukihiko’s fingers were about to touch my bangs. In those three months since we had broken up, his fingers hadn’t touched me at all. I drew my face toward Yukihiko. It was an involuntary movement. Yukihiko’s fingers seemed to gravitate toward my forehead. I uttered a little sound, and when I did, Yukihiko made a similar noise himself. He immediately withdrew his hand. The two of us were silent for a moment, and then we burst into laughter at the same time. Yukihiko’s laugh was easygoing, while mine was a bit stiff.
Birds have troubles too—you’d be surprised, I said through my stiffened laughter. Yukihiko nodded.
Everyone always expects Kanoko the bird to chirp away cheerfully all the time, he said. There was such serenity in what Yukihiko said that I found it a bit annoying. After all, I had been the one who said we should break up. I should be the one who felt serene. However, after we broke up, I was forever the one who was stiff, while Yukihiko was always perfectly relaxed and easygoing.
Soon after that, I stopped seeing the guy that I’d ended things with Yukihiko for. In my memory, that dalliance lasted less than six months. Needless to say, Yukihiko and I did not revive our relationship. We may not have gotten back together, but we remained close friends. Sometimes we’d meet up for tea. And we talked on the phone constantly. Even though we had broken up, things were good. That was how it was with Yukihiko and me. I was quite pleased about that. Or I should have been.
“Yukihiko, why did you come here with me?” I asked. The tide was coming in. The entire ocean had expanded in the night, and it felt as if the air had become much more condensed and heavy.
“Why did I . . . ?” Yukihiko replied leisurely.
I rested my head against Yukihiko’s shoulder. His arm remained where it was, without embracing me. I was the one who put my arm around Yukihiko’s waist and held him.
“It’s hot,” Yukihiko said.
“You’ll be fine.”
“Kanoko, are you happy now?” Yukihiko asked suddenly. Are you lonely or are you happy?—just like the leader of a religious cult.
“Hey, let’s go back to the inn and have sex,” I said, ignoring Yukihiko’s question.
“Let’s not,” Yukihiko replied, letting his arm remain limp.
“Then, why did you come here, Yukihiko?”
“Kanoko, maybe you’re a nymphomaniac?”
“Drop dead, Yukihiko.”
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I could now faintly make out the ocean moving in the night. The surface of the water was smooth. That smoothness was inching up the shore.
Yukihiko put his arm around my shoulder. He held me softly at first, then gradually with more strength. I remembered what Yukihiko’s had body felt like when we were lovers, and the way he used to make love to me. I remembered the way that I had loved Yukihiko. I remembered it very clearly. But in the midst of remembering, I also realized that, here, in the present moment, I had never completely lost the sensation of these things.
“Yukihiko,” I said softly. How many years had it been since I had called his name like that.
“Kanoko,” Yukihiko said, his voice deep.
We stayed like that for a long time, holding each other’s shoulder and waist tightly. The waves had come almost all the way up to our feet.
Yukihiko’s lips grazed my cheek. I planted a light kiss on his neck.
“The night seems immense, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“Yukihiko, you know I love you.”
“Me too, I’ll always love you, Kanoko.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“It’s no use,” Yukihiko said without hesitation, still holding my shoulder tightly.
“Huh?”
“It’s over between us.”
I made another idiotic sound.
“It’s over, don’t you know,” Yukihiko said, with warmth in his voice.
“Is it really over?” I repeated, like an idiot.
“It is,” Yukihiko reiterated.
I felt as if my mind had gone completely blank.
It was true, I thought. Yukihiko and I, we weren’t far apart, but we were each in our respective places, separate from one another.
And although I was here now, and Yukihiko was here too, that was all it meant.
That was all. Time had passed, and we were still broken up, here on this beach and everywhere else.
Time is an idiot, I thought, as I was seized by a tremendous sense of powerlessness.
Yukihiko and I, we were like idiots. Everyone—we were all idiots, I thought, as I wrapped my arms even tighter around Yukihiko’s waist.
“Why is it that we can’t make it work, even though we love each other?” I asked, even though I knew that the answer didn’t matter.
“It’s because I’m helpless,” Yukihiko replied quietly.
“Helpless?”
Yukihiko was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Kanoko, I really loved you.”
The tide had come in, and our legs were wet. I wondered how long the driftwood we were sitting on had been there. It must have always been in the same spot, without being swept away, even when the ocean was rough and the waves were high.
Yukihiko and I too lingered, unmoving in the night, like something that had been on this beach for a long time. I could feel Yukihiko’s heartbeat reverberating throughout his entire body. I wondered if that tiny crab had made it back to its hole.
“It’s getting cold, Yukihiko.”
“Let’s stay like this a little longer.”
“Nuh-uh, let’s go back to the inn,” I said slowly. My mind was still a blank.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Let’s go back to the inn, and go to bed like a good boy and girl.”
Yukihiko laughed. He patted my head. Yukihiko, I murmured his name. Deep in my heart.
“Let’s stay like this a little longer,” Yukihiko said.
Okay, I nodded.
“The lights offshore are pretty,” I said, in a blank voice.
“They are pretty,” Yukihiko agreed.
“I wish the night tide would just keep coming in forever.”
I wished the night tide would come in, and we’d be submerged, and then we’d turn into tiny crabs. And once we became crabs—without knowing about one another—when the tide went out, we’d come out of our holes, and when it came in, we’d return.
Now I could feel Yukihiko’s heartbeat reverberating throughout my entire body.
“Yukihiko,” I said out loud. I tried to condense all of the kindness I felt at that moment into my voice.
“Huh?”
“Yukihiko,” I said again. This time as quietly as I could, keeping my tone neutral.
“Huh?”
Ever so quietly, traces of Yukihiko and of me spread out toward the night tide.
Yukihiko. I said his name one more time. This time I made no sound at all.
Yukihiko. It’s a shame we can’t go back. Yukihiko. Time goes on, and I’m lonely. Yukihiko. We were idiots, weren’t we?
Every so often the waves made a crashing sound, and then would recede. The tide came in even further. In the night, my heart was racing, on and on, forever.