Because of a typhoon that swept across Western Japan, we had days of strong rain and wind. The trees on the streets lost most of their leaves. They looked a little embarrassed with their bare branches sticking up into the sky.
Wada was very busy at work for a while, and it wasn’t until four days after Tomo’s birthday party that we were able to see each other. Normally, it would have been his day off, but Wada had to rush to work and stayed into the afternoon. It was close to evening by the time we met.
Apparently Wada thought that I’d been acting strangely recently. As soon as we were together, he asked me apprehensively if something was wrong. I decided I would ask first about what happened that night.
After I’d finished telling him what I saw, Wada murmured, “So, is that the reason you’ve seemed so down?” He seemed to understand at last. “It’s no wonder,” he said. He let out a long sigh, as if he realized he’d made a terrible mistake. Then he sat there with his eyes shut, not moving at all.
The Saveur was packed again that day. Sitting next to us, a man in a suit sipped his coffee as he leisurely spread out his newspaper on the table. Across from us, a young couple huddled together talking. The rain had cleared up early that morning, and the sun was peeking through the clouds at last. Through the window, the soft dusk light quietly streamed into the dimly lit interior.
Wada hadn’t touched his coffee. He sat there with a grim expression on his face. His shoulder, closer to the window, glowed gold in the sunlight. He hadn’t moved in so long that I began to worry. “Are you okay?” I asked.
Wada opened his eyes, and sounding even more serious than usual, he said, “I’m okay . . . I was wrong not to tell you about it. It was thoughtless. I don’t know. I just imagined it from your point of view, and I thought it would make you feel bad. But it looks like, by not telling you, I ended up worrying you instead. I’m really sorry.” Wada said all this incredibly fast. He tried to recount the sequence of events that led to him seeing her . . . That evening when he was at work, she’d contacted him out of the blue, saying she wanted to return a book of his. It was the first time he’d heard from her in a year. He said she could keep it, but she said she was already nearby, and she insisted on returning it. When he met up with her, she urged him to come back to her . . .
But before Wada could say more, I interrupted him. “That’s enough.”
“Enough?” he said, his eyes wide with surprise.
“I mean it’s okay. I see clearly that it was nothing,” I said, smiling. The smile came naturally; there was no need to force it. To tell the truth, I’d been pretty anxious about seeing Wada again. But with him right in front of me, I felt so much better somehow, and it really seemed things were okay.
“What? But . . .” Wada furrowed his brow. The look on his face showed he didn’t understand how I’d been convinced so quickly. He always made that face whenever he was baffled by something. The man sitting next to us looked up from his newspaper, reacting perhaps to the sound of Wada’s voice, and gave us a glance. But he quickly lost interest and went back to his own little world.
“It wasn’t because I wanted you to tell me about that that I asked to see you today. The truth is, I just wanted to see you.”
“But you were worrying about it.”
I shook my head. “It really doesn’t matter. It was a shock, for sure, but the biggest shock for me was that it made me realize I didn’t trust you. I wasn’t sure how to face you today . . . So, you see, I was the problem, not you.”
“The problem?” Wada frowned again. It was starting to seem like he’d been making that face all day.
“That’s right. Because I was a coward. I’ve been holding back from opening my heart to you. Without realizing it, I was afraid of getting hurt. I finally understood when Momoko pointed it out to me. That’s why I’ve decided to put an end to all that.”
Once I put it into words, it felt like all the pointless anxiety that had been building up in my body was suddenly released. I felt at ease. It was okay. Really. I could see that when I took a good look at Wada. I hadn’t tried that before. Not once in the whole time we’d been going out.
Wada stared at me for a long time, blinking again and again, before he finally mumbled, “Is that right?” He sounded deeply moved.
“Hmmm?” I asked.
“I was just thinking that you spent this week thinking all this for me,” he said, and finally brought the coffee to his lips.
“Hmmm,” I said, leaning my head to one side as I thought it over. “Maybe it was for you, or maybe it was really for me. If I hadn’t done that, I think at some point I would’ve started to hate myself. If that happened, I wouldn’t be able to be with you. And I couldn’t have that.”
Wada listened to me, scratching his head. He gave an embarrassed laugh. “I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster today.”
“I’m sorry. I think it all must sound weird,” I said, and finished the last of my coffee, signaling that we’d reached the end of that part of the conversation.
Before we left the coffee shop, Wada, conscientious to a fault, added one last thing, fidgeting a little as he spoke: “It’s really my fault. Anyway, there’s nothing going on with her. I won’t see her again. Believe me.” I couldn’t help letting out a little laugh.
After that, Wada and I took a long stroll through the neighborhood at twilight. We were headed to his place. We both had to be at work in the morning, but tonight we wanted to be together.
Wada was walking along as he always did, with his back straight and his head held high, when he suddenly said, “Can I confess something? I’m really jealous of you, Takako.”
“Me? Why?” I asked. What he’d said was so unexpected it astonished me.
“You have so many people you can rely on, so many people you can trust.”
“You mean people like my uncle Satoru?”
“Yes,” he nodded with a smile. “It’s obvious. You mean so much to everyone.”
“You think so?” It’s not that I hadn’t felt it before, though I’d felt there were a lot of people who liked to make fun of me. Especially Momoko and Sabu.
“It’s because you draw all of these people to you. You have that magnetism. And because you value them too.”
“I’m not so sure about magnetism,” I said, embarrassed. “But it’s true that after I came up to Tokyo, there weren’t many people in my life whom I’d known for very long. It was the same when I was at home too. I didn’t really have anyone I could speak to freely the way I can with my uncle and Momoko or people like Tomo. I’m kind of amazed by it myself.”
When I first went to my uncle’s bookshop, I never dreamed I’d meet all these people. That includes Wada too. If not for my pathetic broken heart, I never would’ve come to the Morisaki Bookshop, and I would still be estranged from my uncle, and I probably would never have met Wada. Thinking about it made me feel strange. It was all interconnected, and now we were walking side by side through the streets of Jimbocho at twilight.
But the idea that Wada felt jealous of me was still hard to imagine. And Wada was someone who could endear himself to a multitude of people no matter where we went. He was the kind of person who could get along well with everyone.
Wada strongly disagreed when I told him what I thought. “That’s not true at all. From the time I was little, people always told me I was so serious. It’s true that I might be able to get along well with people anywhere I go, but on the other hand, I’m constantly positioning myself as an outsider, and I can’t do more than interact with people. My mind is always calm. I don’t really have many memories of joy, even as a child. I don’t know why that is. I think it might be the effect of growing up in an emotionally distant home. I distanced myself from my parents at times, but I don’t think that was the only reason for it. I was probably just born like that. It’s just the kind of person I am.” Wada went on talking, his eyes fixed on the palm of his right hand, like he was trying to see what he was made of. “Everyone gets tired of being with a person like that, even if there’s a novelty to it at first. It doesn’t matter who it is. That’s why everyone ends up going away. The first time you saw my place, it was in a terrible condition, wasn’t it? I don’t know. I think it shows what kind of person I am. For all the ways I’ve learned to keep up appearances, on the inside I’m a mess. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
“But when I look at you and the Morisakis, deep down I know I want to be a part of that world. It’s what I long for. The idea I told you about—to write a novel set at the bookshop—I think that was my own modest way of trying to be a part of it.” As Wada said those words, he looked at me. He seemed a little bit embarrassed. I found myself looking back at him, staring at his face. Until this moment, I hadn’t the slightest idea that he felt this way. I felt like I finally understood why he’d looked so anxious when he confessed that he was writing a novel.
“I want all of you to accept me. I want to share the joy and sadness with all of you. This is really the first time in my life I’ve felt that way.”
I gently squeezed Wada’s warm hand in mine.
“Of course, we will. I mean, you’re a wonderful person.”
“You think so?” Wada muttered without any conviction.
I turned to look at him and said definitively, “You are. I promise.”
Wada looked at me, a bit surprised, and smiled fondly. “Thank you,” he said. But I felt like I was the one who ought to thank him. I was happy that Wada had told me how he felt. I was happy he cared about me and the people who are important to me. I kind of felt like I was being rewarded. For finding the courage to confide in him what I was feeling.
Sharing your thoughts with someone seems so simple, but at times it can be surprisingly difficult. Even more so when it’s someone you care so much for. That’s what I thought about as I walked next to him. But if you can find the courage to do it, it’ll bring you closer together.
We turned the corner, and Wada’s apartment building came into view. We walked straight for it, hand in hand.
In the space of a few days, it felt like winter had arrived, and my favorite season was over. But that wasn’t so bad.
Because from here on, whether it was winter or spring or whatever season might come, I believed these gentle days would continue. And all the people I love would spend them laughing together.
As we walked down the street at twilight, this was what I told myself, though I had no grounds to believe it.