What happened that evening hit me harder than expected. I felt restless during the day, and at night I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t feel much like reading.
It got so bad that at work I made a ridiculous mistake, and they discovered a major problem with the data I sent to a client. That caused me to get yelled at mercilessly by Wada #2. But it was all 100 percent my fault.
I was utterly useless. I couldn’t concentrate on anything.
At night in my apartment, when I was all alone on my futon, I couldn’t stop going over these foolish things in my head.
What did it mean to be in a relationship? I wondered as I stared vacantly at the ceiling. We went to the movies, we went out to eat, we slept at each other’s places. But if I never got inside his heart, would we ever really be together? What exactly did I mean to Wada? For example, did I have the right to interrogate him about what happened that night? Even thinking of it as a right made me feel like there was something wrong with me.
Because of all this, I was afraid even to talk to Wada. I used to look forward to his calls, but now I wanted to run and hide when I saw his name show up on my phone.
Wada’s voice still sounded exactly the same on the phone after that night. Calm and kind as always. Before, whenever I heard his voice, I felt at ease. Like I was looking out over the calm surface of a lake. But now, his voice felt awfully far away.
“What’s wrong?” Wada asked me, sounding worried. But I was never good at expressing myself. “Are you not feeling well?” I could hear in his voice that he was confused.
“No. It’s nothing. Well, good night.”
Right before I hung up, I told him I had to cancel our date next week because I was going to be working late.
Soon, I’d reached my limit for being stuck in my head and depressed. I found myself heading toward the little restaurant where Momoko worked.
“Oh dear, you mean Wada would do something so shameless?”
I’d told her that all this had happened to a friend of mine, but Momoko saw through me easily. There was no way I was going to pull one over on her. While she watched over me in her white apron, I drank sake, and then the words came easily, as if the tangled thread inside me had come loose at last. I came clean about the whole story, including how I still couldn’t get over it.
“Good grief, this place is turning into a relationship counseling service.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, as long as it’s for my adorable niece,” Momoko said with a grin, though I had my doubts whether she truly meant it. “You’re afraid to confirm this with Wada?” she asked.
I nodded silently.
“But Wada’s not that kind of person, is he?”
“It’s because I believe he isn’t that kind of person that it’s so scary. Because the thought that he could cheat on me is really terrifying.”
“Hey, Takako.” Momoko came around from behind the counter and sat down next to me. “Listen, I’m no great scholar. I’m not very well-read. It’s all I can do to read one book in the time Satoru reads ten. But I think I’m a pretty good judge of people. As far as I can tell, Wada would never deliberately hurt you. You can see that in his eyes. But I think maybe the bigger problem here is the wall you’ve built around yourself.”
“The wall?” I repeated.
Sitting beside me, Momoko stared at me, trying to look me right in the eye.
“You know what I mean, don’t you?”
“I think I might.”
After what happened with my previous boyfriend, I had unconsciously been avoiding trusting anyone completely. And I was scared, scared because I’d been careless in trusting someone before, scared of being hurt again, of cursing myself for my own foolishness and wanting to throw it all away again.
That’s why I was always overreacting to everything Wada said or did, and not just on this occasion.
“If you won’t open your heart, it’s selfish to expect the other person alone to open theirs to you, don’t you think?” Momoko said. “Unless you take that first step, I don’t think anything’s going to get better. Wada’s a human being, after all. He might get tired of living with your chronic indecisiveness, and if that happens, you’ll be the one to regret it.”
What Momoko said cut me to the quick. I’d asked so much of Wada, but I hadn’t offered anything in return. And like she said, I had gone to great pains to read into every little thing Wada did or said, searching for what the look in his eyes could have told me.
As I mulled this over, I heard a high-pitched shriek coming from the kitchen. Mr. Nakasono, the owner, was yelling, “Momoko, help me!”
“Yes, right away,” Momoko shouted back, and got up from her chair.
“Well, I’ve got to run, but do me a favor and try not to worry your aunt Momoko too much. Hurry up and put my mind at ease.” She pinched my cheek, and without giving me a moment to respond, she ran at full speed to the kitchen, where Mr. Nakasono was still yelling, “Help! Help!”
It was Thursday night, a few days later, that we held Tomo’s birthday party. We called it a party, but it was a cozy night with just the three of us. At Tomo’s request, we’d decided to have dinner on the second floor of the Morisaki Bookshop, and had brought the long table normally used as a counter upstairs to set up our hot pot.
We tried to invite my uncle and Momoko, but they declined, claiming the party “was no place for old folks like them.” Takano refused to come at first, saying that Tomo probably wouldn’t want him there, but I persuaded him that it wasn’t true, and half forced him to join us. He showed up with a nervous look on his face, dressed lightly, of course, in only an orange hooded sweatshirt. I couldn’t help thinking that he ought to have dressed a little more stylishly for a night with the girl he loved.
Although Tomo knew that Takano was coming, the two of them only said hello at the door to the bookshop and seemed awkwardly nervous after that. I couldn’t say things were great with Wada, but things were looking really bad here, so I forced myself to be cheerful. My cheerfulness was purely superficial though, and it only seemed to end up dampening the mood further.
In this gloomy atmosphere, we picked at the hot pot, barely saying a word. Takano and I drank beer while Tomo, who didn’t drink alcohol, had orange juice. Tomo ate only vegetables; Takano ate only tofu.
But we’ve done all this for Tomo’s birthday, I thought to myself. As I watched the two of them sitting there silently with only their chopsticks moving, I got more and more irritated. And naturally, the one to bear the brunt of my irritation was Takano.
“Takano, can you quit eating only the tofu? Eat some vegetables and chicken.”
Takano had just taken two big, round pieces of tofu and was eating them by himself.
“What? Oh, I’m sorry. I just thought there was too much tofu left. I assumed you two didn’t really like it.” Takano was flustered, but I kept pushing him.
“Don’t make that decision on your own. I’m trying to eat a nice balanced meal. Tomo, you want some tofu too, don’t you?”
Tomo was startled as she was suddenly drawn into the conversation. She looked up at us. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “Takano, you can eat it.”
“You can’t be too polite, Tomo. It’s your birthday,” I said.
Takano nodded frantically in agreement. “That’s right. I promise not to touch another piece of tofu. Please eat as much as you like.”
He was about to put the tofu slices back, so I rushed to stop him.
After that, we left our leading lady alone and went back and forth bickering over tofu. Tomo watched us, looking like she had no idea what to do. In the end, just after I complained that Takano was a guy who couldn’t even dress for the season, Tomo couldn’t take it anymore and intervened.
“Um, the tofu is really not a problem. What’s more important is I need to apologize to Takano,” she said, turning to face him. “I was awful to you. It’s entirely my fault. I’m sorry,” she said, bowing deeply.
Takano panicked, as one might have expected, and at the moment he tried to stand up he banged his kneecap on the corner of the table.
“No, please, I’m the one who needs to apologize,” he said, in agony from his throbbing knee. Tomo apologized again. As I cleaned up the mess Takano had made of the table, I said to both of them, “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”
Takano had tears in his eyes, from his feelings for Tomo or from the pain in his knee, and he seemed to want to say something else, but he reluctantly sat down and stopped talking.
In any case, after that the heaviness in the air seemed to dissipate. I seized the chance to give Tomo her birthday presents. Mine was a brooch in the shape of a lily that I thought she might like; Takano’s was a stained-glass lamp. The lamp was intricately crafted in the shape of a lighthouse. It was kind of a wonderful item, the kind of thing a guy who wore seasonally appropriate clothes might choose. Tomo smiled at last, and said both presents were wonderful.
“Actually, Takano originally wanted to give you a different present,” I said, ignoring Takano’s attempts to stop me. There was no need to keep it a secret now. “But we couldn’t find the book, Tomo. The Golden Dream. You’ve been looking for it all this time, right?”
Tomo’s mouth hung open. She looked flabbergasted. She turned to me and asked wildly, “What? You were looking for that book?”
“Well, yeah, but . . .”
“I apologize. I’d always remembered what you said about it back at the Saveur. I guess I went too far,” Takano said. “I’m sorry.”
Tomo looked flabbergasted again as she listened to Takano. “No, it’s not that, Takano. That book doesn’t actually exist.”
Now it was our turn to be shocked.
“What? Really? But . . .”
“I’m sorry. I described it in a way that invited this misunderstanding.”
“But when Takano looked it up online, he found a post from other people who were searching for it too.” Takano nodded along with me.
“That must’ve been other people who believed it existed too. In part, it’s become almost a rumor. You could think of it as a phantom book,” Tomo said apologetically.
In that case there was no way we could have found it even searching in the greatest neighborhood for books in the world. It was no wonder my uncle didn’t know it either. Leave it to Takano to jump to conclusions like that. I gave Takano a look full of loathing as he sat there astonished. Then again, I never had the slightest suspicion that the book might not exist so I couldn’t lay the blame entirely on Takano.
In any case, Tomo gave us a detailed account of the book that did not exist.
In the early years of the Showa era, an unknown writer named Mitsuko Fuyuno published a book called A Moment of Twilight. It’s the story of an isolated and blind old man, who is facing death, and the middle-aged woman he hires to read to him. Perhaps the story was too romantic, because neither the literary world nor the general public paid any attention at the time of its publication. The Golden Dream is the novel the woman reads to the old man when he’s on his deathbed. That text is the key to the whole book. At the time, there were a number of people who became obsessed with finding it, and among them it was a bit of a craze. But after several years, they established that the book was actually the author’s creation.
“In A Moment of Twilight, The Golden Dream is described as a breathtaking masterpiece. After the book is read to him, the novel ends with the old man, who up till then had never known love, realizing that the woman at his side, who had served as his eyes for many years, is the person he’s in love with.
“It was my sister who first told me about the novel The Golden Dream. She said it was a wonderful book, and I absolutely had to read it. This was about half a year before the accident. I always believed everything my sister told me. So I was fixated on finding that book. But then I discovered that no such book actually existed . . .”
Tomo turned to me and laughed like it was all a joke.
“It seems likely that my sister knew from the start that the book didn’t exist. I mean she said she’d borrowed the book from her boyfriend and read it.
“Why would my sister lie to me? My sister wasn’t the kind of person to lie about insignificant things. So then why? Was it only to make fun of me? Or maybe she had noticed my forbidden love I felt for her boyfriend, and she wanted to pay me back? Either way, now that my sister’s dead, there’s no way I’ll ever know.
“And even though there is no book, I still find myself looking for it whenever I go into a used bookshop. Whenever someone asks me if there’s a book I want, it’s always the first thing I mention. Some part of me hopes that if I ever find that book, something inside me will change, like the old blind man in the book. I know it’s an extremely infantile thing to believe, but still . . .
“I had absolutely no idea you were looking for that book. I’m really sorry.” At the end, Tomo apologized to us again.
“There’s no need to apologize. After all, we took it upon ourselves to look for it.”
To think that we spent two weeks searching for the book without the slightest idea of the real story behind it. It all seemed perfectly meaningless now. Tomo wasn’t just looking for that book. Deep down, she was searching for an answer she’d never find. And it was all connected to events around her sister’s death. Or rather, she was trying to connect it to them.
When Tomo talked about her sister she always gave that lonesome smile. She seemed so sad.
“Happy birthday!” Takano suddenly stood up and yelled. “Your smile always gave me courage. I never quit my job and tried to do my best at the coffee shop because I wanted to see your smile.” What was this guy talking about all of a sudden? I tugged hard on his sleeve still in shock, but he was so excited, I couldn’t stop him.
“I mean, what I’m trying to say is that, even if you didn’t realize it, you helped someone, and that person is here right now with you. Someone who’s sincerely happy to be with you on the day that you were born is standing right here with you now. I want you to remember that if you can. That’s all I wanted to say.” After saying all that without pausing to breathe, he ended by uttering another feeble “Happy birthday.” Then his face turned bright red like he was angry, and he sat down with a thud. All at once the room fell silent. He wanted to cheer up Tomo so badly it hurt, but I think, no matter how you look at it, this might have been too much at once.
In front of us, the hot pot had reached a rolling boil, so I turned off the flame on the burner. Tomo hadn’t opened her mouth. She was still looking down, staring into her lap.
Then she slowly got to her feet. She opened the sliding door to the room buried under the book collection, went in, and suddenly slid the door shut from the inside.
“Did I say something wrong?”
There was no sound coming from the room next door. We waited for a moment, but she didn’t seem to be coming out. I was worried, so I knocked on the door and peeked inside. I had no idea why, but there in the dim light, Tomo was sitting upright, reading with intense concentration. Even though I had opened the door, she made no attempt to look my way.
“Um, Tomo?” I said with her back toward me.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m reading,” she replied, sounding perfectly composed.
“Yeah, but why now?”
“I felt a sudden urge to read,” she said without looking up from the book. Was this her way of avoiding reality? The reality that Takano’s speech could be seen as a declaration of love?
As Takano drew near to her from behind, Tomo brought her face closer to her book, as if she were trying to immerse herself in reading even more. Takano and I turned toward each other, but we had absolutely no idea what to do.
Then before I knew it, Takano abruptly sat down beside Tomo, grabbed a nearby paperback, and began to read in silence.
For an instant, Tomo looked up and saw Takano, then she returned to her book without saying a word.
“What? . . . You’re scaring me . . .” I muttered aloud without meaning to. Neither of them showed the slightest reaction. I started to worry a little about what I’d do if I was stuck waiting for them like this until morning.
Takano abruptly opened his mouth to speak. “Um . . . Tomoko, I’m not good at explaining myself. I might not know how to say this, but I can stay with you like this without talking. You call when you need me. I’ll come right away.”
Tomo didn’t look up from her book, but there was a slight stirring in the shadows. It even seemed like she nodded slightly. When Takano saw this, he smiled a little and then went back to reading silently.
Surprising as it may seem, perhaps it was Takano who understood Tomo, or maybe even human beings in general, far better than I did. While I was worrying about how I could bring them together, he was thinking about how to make her feel better. Rather than trying to force open the door that she had wanted closed behind her, it made more sense to start by getting her to open it from her side. Maybe he’s right, I thought. As I watched the two of them sitting silently side by side, it seemed that someday soon Tomo might open the door herself.
I picked up a nearby book and leaned against the wall. As I flipped through the pages, I reached a decision. I would call Wada. I would tell him that I wanted to see him soon. I had to be the one to tear down the wall I’d built.
As it grew late on the night of Tomo’s birthday party, the only sound was the turning of pages.