mission report for melonpaan (part 2 of 5)
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Shihori and Maki were encouraged to sit in the grass and watch another inning of the baseball game. Nobody else from the village had come down, and the odd mix of players on each team had her rather confused. It was a strange assortment of people in Matsuo Village.
Maki's initial worry had subsided, if only because she'd taken an interest in one of the boys, Nino. He was the quietest of the three. While he waited on deck to bat, he kept turning back to look at the two of them. He didn't have Aiba's teasing attitude, Jun's cheerful indifference. He looked at them like he knew them, or like he knew something about them. Shihori remembered how Nino had stared at her when Aiba had taken her out of the village last time. A look in his eyes she'd not been able to forget.
When the game wrapped up, the older woman put an arm around Aiba's shoulders, yanking off his cap and ruffling his hair playfully. The three boys and the girl from the outfield, Mirei, were apparently coming for lunch as well.
As they walked up the broken street toward the looming apartment blocks, the woman introduced herself as Eiko, the Village Elder and coincidentally as Eiko, Aiba's mother. Maki held Shihori's hand tightly as they walked, still untrusting. They passed by Officer Katori's police box, and Shihori waved to him. He looked up from his still ridiculous stack of manila folders, his face going white as a sheet at the sight of her. But Eiko-san kept walking and so did the four teenagers, so Shihori didn't have much time for a reunion.
The streets of Matsuo Village were as empty as they'd been the previous time. There were no cars anywhere, and weeds grew up through some of the cracks in the cement. Eiko-san led them to an apartment block with a large "Block 8" painted on it. As they passed through the entrance hall, there were mailboxes for the residents. Only four had family name plates on them, even though there were nearly a hundred boxes.
"Matsuo Village doesn't have a lot of citizens, does it?" Shihori asked, following the group up the stairs to the second floor.
Nino looked back at her, obviously wanting to say something but holding himself back. Eiko-san only smiled, pulling a key ring from her pocket. "No," she said, her voice echoing off the walls, "we don't have very many now."
The hallway was fairly wide, with gaps where Shihori thought windows ought to be. The wind whipped through them, chilling Shihori to the bone. It had to be cold walking in these halls during the dead of winter, she thought. They were so open and exposed to the elements.
Eiko-san let them inside, and the boys barreled through, shedding their worn-out sneakers and collapsing on the floor of one of the other rooms, slamming the door behind them. Shihori didn't want to say anything, but it seemed like the Aiba family was rather poor. The entire room only had a worn old table and tatami mats that were covered in small stains. There was no TV, no stereo, no computer, not even curtains for the windows. There was another table in the corner with a small oil lamp on it. It had to be dark in here at night.
There were doors leading to other rooms, probably a bathroom and bedrooms. Shihori sat at the table, Maki sticking like glue to her side. The other girl, Mirei, was rather cute, and Shihori could hear her chirping voice chatting along with the older woman as they took plates out of cabinets and made the usual kitchen time noises.
It was rude of her to judge Aiba's home, especially when his mother had so kindly invited them inside. But how did they live this way? The whole village was in a state of decay. The roads, the weeds, the buildings. And Eiko-san and Aiba-kun both had known of her Grandpa, had said that he had helped them. What had he done for Matsuo Village and why had he never told anyone? Well, she remembered, he'd told Grandma but she'd never believed him. These people were here though, Mirei and Eiko-san in the kitchen, the three boys noisy in one of the bedrooms with the door closed.
Finally good smells came from the kitchen, although when Eiko-san emerged with a tray and Mirei followed, it was only rice and miso soup. And not the kind of miso Shihori's mother made, but the instant kind that had kind of a grainy texture until you swished it around. Maki didn't say a word, and Shihori thanked Eiko-san for the both of them. The boys came out of the bedroom, crowding around the table. Their faces were filthy and their clothes too, but they gobbled down the food like it was the best thing they'd ever eaten. Shihori felt ashamed, could feel her cheeks burning red for thinking so negatively about their lives here. So what if they were poor? They seemed rather happy.
When the meal was finished, Eiko-san ordered the boys to clean up, and they made all sorts of complaining noises before the three of them went into the kitchen. Mirei got up from the table, waving goodbye and saying "see you again sometime" with a kind of wistful sound in her voice. It must have been lonely to be Mirei-san, Shihori thought. She hadn't seen any other girls her age around Matsuo Village, not during the baseball game or with anyone in the streets.
That left the two cousins with Eiko-san, who had taken the least amount of food and had eaten very slowly. "It's remarkable that you've come to us not once but twice, Shihori-chan," Eiko-san mused, staring at her with a kind of pointed gaze. "But I suppose that was to be expected from someone who knew Horikita Taiyo."
"How did you know our Grandpa?" Shihori asked. "He never spoke about this village."
Eiko-san looked sad. "He brought us supplies. Bags of food, wonderful things we could store and use for months and not yet finish. He usually pushed it in a wheelbarrow, all the way from his home. He brought us newspapers and magazines." The older woman smiled. "He had better taste when I was younger, and when he got older he picked out some strange things to read. Stories about pirates or the movie stars he'd liked as a young man. Of course, we took everything gratefully."
They really were poor here, Shihori thought, if so much of their survival had counted on an elderly man wheeling things to town. She remembered her first meeting with Aiba, how he'd mentioned not having any new manga to read. "What does everyone do here? What are your jobs?"
Eiko-san frowned. "We do what we can with what we've been given. Though with Taiyo-san gone..."
"Why don't people believe you exist? Nobody believed Shihori when she came back from this village before," Maki piped up, speaking for the first time since they'd arrived in Block 8. Blunt as ever. Shihori made to apologize to Eiko-san for her cousin's rudeness, but that was when the boys returned from the kitchen.
"It's because we don't," Nino said. "Because we don't exist."
"You're hiding?" Maki asked, cocking her head curiously and staring straight at Nino. "On the run?"
Jun laughed, scratching at his hair. "That would be much more interesting."
Eiko-san drummed her fingers on the table. "It's a delicate situation..."
"It's not delicate, Mom," Aiba protested. "It's how things are and how they'll be forever. You may as well just tell her. And then she'll go home again and it won't matter because nobody would believe her anyway."
Shihori was suddenly hurt by Aiba's words. She could see that Aiba and Nino were in agreement; they both doubted her. But what was wrong with this place? Why did it rely on the kindness of people like her Grandpa? Why did everyone look at her and Maki so strangely? Why did Nino say that they didn't exist? They were standing right in front of her. She'd eaten their food, spoken with them.
"This town is cursed," Eiko-san said quietly, and a shiver ran up Shihori's spine. "It's why we're so empty. It's why we rely on people to help us. It's why nobody believes you. Matsuo Village is not real..."
Shihori's mouth dropped open, looking from Eiko-san to her son to her son's two friends. To the sparsely decorated apartment, to the other buildings rising up just out the window. "But you're real! We're here right now!"
"We're here today," Eiko-san said. "And tomorrow we won't be."
"I don't understand," Shihori answered, more confused than she'd ever been. Her Grandpa's warning about the forest rang in her ears. Officer Katori's words three years earlier, how happy he'd been that she'd come to the village on that specific day, the day her grandfather died. Today was exactly three years from then, the exact same day.
"Today is the only day," Nino said. "Just today. And not tomorrow or the day after that."
"Or the day after that either," Jun added.
Maki clung to her. "Shii-chan, I want to go home."
Shihori elbowed her cousin. "Don't be rude..."
"It's not rude," Eiko-san said, shaking her head before waving at her son sadly. "Ma-kun, you really should take the girls home..."
Shihori found herself thumping her hand on the table. "But I don't understand. You're here!"
"Come back tomorrow, and see for yourself," Nino challenged them, sounding almost mean. "See how real we are."
She was almost as scared as Maki was now. What were these people talking about? Curses and not being real. They'd been so welcoming, but Shihori and Maki's curiosity and questions had riled them up, made them upset. Nobody knew they were here with these people, who were still technically strangers. Their parents didn't even believe in Matsuo Village. Shihori doubted any of these people would do her harm, but they were being so weird. A village couldn't just be there one day and not another, that was absurd.
Shihori didn't get a chance to challenge anything else Eiko-san said. Nino, Aiba, and Jun were lacing up their worn-out sneakers, hinting that it was time to go. They left Block 8 in a hush broken only by the wind blowing down from the mountains and over the hills.
Maki walked on ahead. Matsuo Village seemed extraordinary to her, and Nino and Jun stood on either side of her, answering the million questions she was asking them. Shihori couldn't hear the answers. She was too busy staring around at the buildings, feeling the road under her shoes. It was a road the same as any other, at least in terms of what made it a road. The buildings were buildings, the scattered people were people.
But as she looked closer, she noticed an even more obvious emptiness. The little grocery store didn't have bins full of fresh produce like the ones back home. She peeked inside, saw half empty shelves loaded up with gigantic bags of rice and other items stored in tin cans. There was a spout in the middle of one of the apartment courtyards, and two small boys were pumping water out into a wooden bucket.
Her cousin had gotten far ahead when Aiba came up beside her, giving her a bit of a nudge. "Come on, I've got other stuff to get done today."
"Was it true what Nino said?" she asked. "That you'll be gone tomorrow?"
Aiba nodded. "It's the curse on the village. It's hard to explain because it's, you know, pretty impossible. But we vanish. We pop up one day a year, this day in November."
It sounded silly, but she didn't say so. "But how did the curse happen?"
"It was when my mom was younger, but she and the other adults don't like to talk about it." He kicked a pebble and it skittered down the road. "So I honestly don't know why. Somebody pissed somebody off..." He looked over, blushing a bit about his rude language. "Sorry."
"But you can leave. You can walk me home right?"
"I can go wherever I want today," he explained. "Just today. It's how we survive. People like your grandpa helped, but some of us use this day to go into town and trade for things we need. Help out at a farm or something to earn money to use in the stores. Or some people use this day to leave the village."
Shihori was confused. "But what about the curse?"
"If you're in Matsuo Village at midnight, you go away just like we do. Of course we don't actually go away," Aiba said with a roll of his eyes. "But yeah, that's why there aren't many people left. Too many people hate it, so they leave. Move away and start a new life elsewhere."
They were quiet for a while, seeing Nino and Jun laugh ahead of them as Maki's head pivoted back and forth, firing off questions. Her cousin seemed far less frightened now that they'd left the small apartment in Block 8 and its sad walls desperately in need of paint. Despite her initial quiet, Maki had always been a curious girl.
A strange village - here one day and gone the rest. What kind of curse could do that? It seemed even Aiba didn't know, but yet he stayed. He and his friends, his mother. People like Officer Katori and the people in the outfield. Mirei-san. But even if it vanished, Matsuo Village still had to be there somehow, if only because time carried on. Aiba had grown older these three years.
"Don't you want to leave?" she asked him slowly. "If the whole town moves away, then there's no curse."
He shrugged. "My mom's the Village Elder, and her dad was before her. She won't leave, no matter how hard it is to live here. Matsuo Village is her home, curse or no curse."
She couldn't imagine such a life, only being able to go anywhere on one day a year. She understood now why her Grandpa had befriended Matsuo Village and why he'd helped them. As they made their way out of town and down into the valley, Shihori felt guilty. "This is your one chance to leave, this day," she said. "One day to be normal, and this is the second time you've had to use up your time to walk me around instead. I'm sorry, Aiba-kun."
"It's alright," he said. "When you see the same people every day for the rest of the year, it's kind of nice to see a stranger."
She had an idea, although it was definitely not an idea her parents would like if they found out. Then again, nothing about what she and Maki had done that day was something their parents would like.
"You have until midnight, right? Well Maki and I have until sunset before we have to get back. Why don't you come into town with us?"
--
Aiba floated the idea past the other two boys. Jun almost said yes, but he ended up shaking his head halfway through their walk in the woods. He'd promised his father he'd haul in some wood, help stock up for winter. But Aiba and Nino were seemingly pleased with the idea of a day of fun.
They found the bikes, and the boys both insisted on riding. Nino helped Maki to sit on the handlebars, and they sped off, their laughter bouncing off the trees. Shihori had never seen her cousin so happy, especially with how shy she'd been. Maybe learning the secret of Matsuo Village, the still unconfirmed secret, had unlocked something in her brain, made her excited and eager. And maybe she also thought Nino was cute - it had only taken a boy in a secret town to change her mind about boys being gross. It probably helped that Nino was older, someone to look up to, unlike the boys in her class.
Aiba sighed, twisting the seat of the bike up until it was aligned with his height. He patted the handlebars. "Wanna ride up here?"
She crossed her arms. "It's my bike, you should walk."
"All the way to town?" he complained. "No fair."
"Well," she said, seeing Nino steering crookedly, Maki holding on for dear life as they moved around the curve in the road. "You pedal, and I'll sit on the seat. Handlebars are dangerous."
He laughed at her. "Whatever you say, Shihori-sama." He patted the seat.
She settled herself on the bike seat as Aiba stepped up and onto the pedals. It wobbled a bit, and she put her hands at his waist reflexively to hold on. Gradually he got them moving, pumping his long legs as they hurried after Nino and Maki. Aiba's waist was kind of skinny, but he was warm and very, very real.
Hachimantai wasn't a large city by any means but it was large enough. There were stores and street lights and restaurants. Today she was able to see the town through Aiba and Nino's eyes. Usually Shihori had only come into town to buy sweets or accompany her mother to the grocery store to help restock Grandma's kitchen. But today Aiba and Nino wanted to just take the time and look around.
It was hard for them without any money, but the two older boys walked slowly from store window to store window, looking at sneakers and clothes. Shihori only had her allowance in the small change purse she kept in her pocket, imagining that Maki didn't have much more. But neither of the boys asked her to buy them anything. They just pointed, their eyes going wide, their smiles bittersweet.
It was the only time they got to experience the world beyond Matsuo Village, and Shihori couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like to come out, see technology and cars and grocery stores full of food. It was like they were taking everything in, memorizing it to last them another year.
They ended up in a small cafe, and even though the boys protested, she bought them each an ice cream sundae with extra whipped cream. She met Maki's eyes across the table, and her cousin seemed to be feeling the same. Their Grandpa would have been happy to see them, even if they weren't supposed to be alone with boys. He would have been happy they'd become friends, if only for a day.
Because of the lateness of the year, the sun started to set by 5:00 and after browsing through a shop full of manga and a magic shop that Nino took an interest in, it was time for the girls to get back to their grandparents' house. The boys were planning to stay in town just to watch one of the TVs in the window of the electronics store since it was the only TV they'd get to watch all year.
While Maki headed for their bikes and Nino wandered off toward the electronics store, Aiba looked at her shyly. "Thanks again for the ice cream. That was definitely something your Grandpa could never bring us."
"Well, you helped me too," she admitted. "And I was kind of mean to you last time."
"Yeah, you were."
She gave him a punch in the arm. "You're still a jerk!"
He laughed, and she wondered if she'd ever hear the sound of it again. She was suddenly full of an odd sadness, knowing that it was unlikely she'd come north again any time soon. It was hard for her father to get away, and she couldn't really make up excuses to visit Grandma during school term. When would she even see Aiba again? Or Nino? The others she'd met that day?
"Don't be sad," he teased her. "Your face looks weird when you're sad."
She felt her cheeks grow hot. "Stop looking at my face all the time."
"What am I supposed to look at? Your feet?"
She turned her back on him, wondering why a boy she'd only met twice could get her so worked up, could make her feel so much in such a short amount of time. She decided not to think about it. "I have a question before I go. Can things only be dropped off at your village on days like today? When did my Grandpa visit?"
He sounded happier at this change of topic. "Anytime really. We can find things whenever. We just can't, you know...pick them up when you're there?"
"So you're...invisible?"
He chuckled. "I guess you could say that. I don't know, stop by tomorrow. You'll see."
Aiba made it all sound so normal, but Shihori supposed that was because this sort of life seemed normal to him. Matsuo Village and its strange curse was his normal everyday existence.
"Well maybe I'll bring you something. I don't know when I'll visit again, but I can leave stuff for you whenever I visit Grandma."
"You don't have to do that," he said, making her turn around. His smile was so bright she couldn't look away. "But if you do, it'll make us happy. Just like your Grandpa."
She said goodbye, not wanting to keep him from his TV and his last few hours. It was strange, seeing the boy in front of her and thinking he'd be impossible to see the next day. He gave her a wave and a "see ya later, Shihori-sama" before turning to run after Nino.
She and Maki biked back to the house, telling their parents of an uneventful day in town. Book stores and sundaes and not much else to say. But when they went to bed that night, still tucked in the old futons from when their parents were young, she and Maki talked excitedly about their strange day until their voices grew scratchy and sleep claimed them.
When they woke the next day they had breakfast and made their excuses, taking the bikes out and going the same roundabout way to Matsuo Village.
The buildings were there, still on the hills, but things had changed. The misty fog nearly engulfed the whole town, and there were no signs of life. No children in the courtyards, no people in the streets. She and Maki slowly walked down the main street of town. The sight of the place now sent a shiver down her spine.
The apartment blocks were deteriorated. Stairwells had collapsed, windows were broken. Everything was covered in dust and rubble. Block 8 was impossible to enter - the door was locked, and the ceiling had caved in at the other entryway. The stores were empty, the floors covered in shattered glass and empty grocery bags. Officer Katori's police box was ransacked, and the roof was half missing. The weeds that had poked out of the streets the day before were a wild garden, growing and climbing up the walls. Rats ran in and out of cracks in the cement block buildings. Birds picked around in mounds of garbage.
There was no Aiba-kun, no Nino. No Eiko-san and Jun and Mirei. No Officer Katori. The day before, Matsuo Village had been alive, the remaining people living as best they could with what they had. How had it grown so ruined overnight? The curse was real, and the place was dangerous.
When Shihori turned around, she saw tears in Maki's eyes, her hand over her mouth in shock. They hadn't dreamed yesterday up, it was impossible. They'd had lunch here, had watched the baseball game. Shihori remembered sitting on the bike and letting Aiba pedal, feeling the worn cotton of his t-shirt as she held onto him tightly.
Maki ran, heading back for the valley and the comfort of the trees and Grandma's house beyond. Shihori let her go, spending a few minutes more in the village, desperate to find any traces of life. Instead a giant black bird cawed at her from where he was perched atop a tall wooden pole that had once had power lines tethered to it. She could feel tears pricking her own eyes.
She made it to the edge of town, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, before it happened. It was cold, so much colder without people here, but suddenly there was warmth, like fingers tugging at her wrist.
She whirled around, looking left and looking right. "Aiba-kun?" she whispered into the chilly air, her voice shaking.
Nothing. Nobody. Just the bird staring her down from the other side of town.
--
Grandpa's words followed Shihori through junior high. Not to enter the forest, that she'd only regret it. She regretted it, if only because she couldn't see Eiko-san, her son, or his friends. The thought of the day in Matsuo and Hachimantai haunted her, images and memories flashing in her dreams often.
It haunted her cousin too. It was after Christmas, at the turn of the year after their joint visit to Matsuo, that she started receiving handwritten letters from Maki regularly. They started out normally enough, with Maki talking about school, her life in Kyushu, taking a cooking class with her mother at the community center. But eventually Matsuo Village came up and started taking over the cousins' letters back and forth.
They speculated about the curse. Shihori's parents bought her a computer for her fourteenth birthday to use for school, but instead she spent hours trying to find any evidence of Matsuo Village. She only found websites talking about abandoned buildings, the ones she saw on the hills, the ones that had decayed so badly. There was little information about the place, a company town that had been under construction and never actually inhabited. This was a lie, Shihori was certain of it, but nobody talked about it on message boards or websites. People just wondered if it was haunted, or geeked out about visiting the place and snapping photos but nobody actually did.
She shared her limited findings with Maki. Even as her cousin grew older, getting more involved at school with student council and sports, she always made time to write Shihori letters. "I wonder what Nino and Aiba-kun are doing today?" Maki would write, and then she'd answer her own question. Baseball or basketball, chasing each other around the valley and telling stupid jokes. It was Maki's opinion that Matsuo Village was still there and the place they'd seen, the ruins, was the real illusion from the curse.
Shihori didn't know what to believe. She'd seen Matsuo Village, but she'd also seen what was left the next day. How solid and real it had been too.
They visited Grandma's place in the summertime, and when Shihori was fifteen her parents let her take the train up north on her own without them. Sadly her cousin didn't go at the same time. Maki had reported during her spring break that the ruins were the same as always, but that she'd left a basket of freshly baked cookies and other sweets on one day and returned the next to find the basket empty. Shihori suspected the blackbirds and rats, but Maki was certain that Nino and his friends had come for the treats.
Aiba-kun had even said she could leave things for them any time. She decided to test the theory herself. After a long morning helping Grandma clean, she left the older woman to her afternoon TV soap operas and headed out to the storage shed. Grandpa's old wheelbarrow was there, the one he'd apparently used to bring supplies to Matsuo Village.
She loaded it up with the magazines cluttering up Grandma's table, saying she was taking them off to be recycled. She'd also packed her suitcase half full of manga from home. It had been a real pain to get on and off the trains with it, but she decided it was worth it. Once the wheelbarrow was heavy with her donations, she took off into the woods.
It was miserable, hot even under the trees. This summer was seeing a heat wave, even north in Iwate where it rarely got that way. She was sweaty and disgusting and bug-bitten before she even made it to the valley. It had taken her twice as long as she'd anticipated, not really remembering how steep the pathway was downward. She'd nearly toppled the wheelbarrow a dozen times and had lost two of the old fashion magazines that had probably been her mother's.
Even with the summer sunshine Matsuo Village was still shrouded in its mysterious fog. She huffed and puffed, wishing she was as athletic as her cousin. Maki ran track at her junior high school while Shihori had simply grown lazier over the years. She'd gotten a little plump, spending hours with manga or on her computer checking for new evidence about Matsuo Village. The wheelbarrow nearly got away from her and she had to almost run with it down into the valley. How had Grandpa managed this for so long?
She then had to push the wheelbarrow back up the town hill, almost glad that nobody was around to see her. There were still birds and rats, and she bit her lip to try to not freak out. Where would be the best place to leave things? Were the people of Matsuo Village here, seeing her wheel in the books? There had been no library that she could remember, and there certainly wasn't one in the ruins.
The best kept building was Block 3, one of the first buildings that ringed the town. Despite all the decay, the door still opened and closed firmly and hadn't been locked. She could smell rot when she tugged it open, hurrying to pull her shirt up to cover her nose. Animals had been living in here, or maybe they still were. It smelled like their waste. But they hopefully would leave the books alone if she brought them up higher.
Leaving the wheelbarrow at the bottom of the staircase, still intact and without any debris, she went up and down the stairs with armfuls of books, leaving them on the second floor landing in piles. It didn't smell as bad up here. Maybe the animals left this floor alone, having made their homes well enough at ground level. She was reminded of the passageway in Block 8, remembering the sound of Eiko-san's keys jangling as she led them to the Aiba family's apartment.
It only urged her on, still sweating, but moving the books and magazines until her wheelbarrow was empty. She wished she'd brought a snack or even a water bottle, pushing the wheelbarrow out of the building and sitting down against the wall, leaning her head back against the concrete.
It had been quite the undertaking, but she wouldn't know until tomorrow if it had done any good. She shut her eyes, taking in the quiet. It had always been quiet in Iwate. It was always such a contrast from Tokyo, the absence of honking car horns and trains rattling down the tracks. There was only the wind rushing through the trees, the sounds of birds. It was even quieter in Matsuo, and she easily lost herself in thinking about some of the stories she and Maki wrote back and forth.
Their written letters, speculating what their Matsuo Village friends did to occupy their time, had become more complex over the years. Shihori found herself imagining she was in Matsuo too, pumping water from the well, playing baseball in the valley. She was fifteen now and Aiba-kun and his friends were eighteen. In the world Shihori really lived in, they'd be graduating from high school, getting jobs or preparing to go to university. But what sort of future did the people of Matsuo Village dream about? Did they want to stay or leave?
Sometimes when Shihori was feeling down, she remembered Aiba-kun's teasing, the mocking way he'd called her "Shihori-sama." When the girls in school found notes in their lockers, handed out chocolates to boys on Valentine's Day, Shihori didn't participate as much as she could have. She made chocolates for the most popular boys in class as a courtesy, not expecting any result. She found herself wishing she could make chocolates for Aiba-kun and his friends, the people who'd actually appreciate them. She passed notes for her friends, arranged group meet-ups at cafes and the shopping center, and then took a step back.
She was certain of it now - even if she'd only seen him twice at age nine and age twelve, Shihori was certain that none of the other boys in school could compare to Aiba-kun. To his goofy laugh and his weird smile. Even if she'd only seen him those two times, she and Maki had spent the last three years wondering about him and his friends. Imagining entire years' worth of activities for them. Shihori suspected that she spent even more time pondering it than her cousin did. It was silly, but she'd created an Aiba-kun in her mind that was so perfect that she didn't really mind if the boys at school just wanted to be friends, only took her aside privately so they could ask her to pass along feelings to one of her friends.
Boys could come and go, Shihori decided, but she'd always have Matsuo Village and Aiba-kun waiting with a smirk to walk her through the woods.
--
When she returned the next day, itching at the mosquito bites dotting her legs, her heart swelled when she went to Block 3 and found the piles gone. Not ransacked by animals, but all of it gone. Given a home.
She smiled, running out into the middle of the town, arms outstretched. "See!" she called out, "See, now you've got your manga, so you can't complain!"
This became Shihori's new routine. She spent more and more time with Grandma, using all of her school breaks during high school to take the train north and bring new manga. During spring break and summer, she toted things up north. The spending money her parents gave her to use in town went to buy sacks of rice, tins of preserved vegetables. New pots and pans and utensils she had to hide in the storage shed until she could bring them to the village and not let Grandma find out. Bags full of clothes from secondhand shops with new buttons Shihori sewed on herself diligently in the small bedroom with the old futon.
And each time without fail the items had been claimed the next day. Matsuo Village really was there, Aiba-kun was there and she was helping him.
She turned sixteen, she turned seventeen. She returned to the northern greenery, to the house among the cedars. Panda the mutt died peacefully in his sleep of old age, Grandma and Shihori by his side. Otherwise Iwate remained largely unchanged. And every time she came home from Iwate, Tokyo seemed too loud, too crowded. People with the newest fashions, the newest books. Fast food and cup noodles and studying endlessly for university entrance exams.
She still went out with her friends occasionally, but they accused her of growing distant. Complained that she spent too much time in her room, too much time not going to the department store to get makeup samples at the designer counters, too much time skipping out on school events. "We've got the perfect guy for you," her friends always moaned. "But he definitely wouldn't want some weirdo who stays locked up in her room!"
Her parents joined in, wondering why she stayed in so much, messing around on the computer, fabric all over the floor for the next batch of clothes she planned to sneak up north. "Look at your cousin Maki. She's excelling in school!" Her cousin Maki had grown up totally perfect, always making time for Shihori's increasingly lengthy letters and speculation, but still having good grades and throwing herself into her school activities with enthusiasm. All around, Maki was wonderful and Shihori was a hermit with a sewing machine.
Shihori graduated high school with little fanfare, having decided to put off university. She knew that her parents found her odd, had been concerned about her for years now. Perhaps they thought something terrible had happened to her that day in the woods, the day they believed she'd made up everything about Matsuo Village and what she'd seen. Something had happened, of course, but it wasn't what they thought.
Part Three
Shihori and Maki were encouraged to sit in the grass and watch another inning of the baseball game. Nobody else from the village had come down, and the odd mix of players on each team had her rather confused. It was a strange assortment of people in Matsuo Village.
Maki's initial worry had subsided, if only because she'd taken an interest in one of the boys, Nino. He was the quietest of the three. While he waited on deck to bat, he kept turning back to look at the two of them. He didn't have Aiba's teasing attitude, Jun's cheerful indifference. He looked at them like he knew them, or like he knew something about them. Shihori remembered how Nino had stared at her when Aiba had taken her out of the village last time. A look in his eyes she'd not been able to forget.
When the game wrapped up, the older woman put an arm around Aiba's shoulders, yanking off his cap and ruffling his hair playfully. The three boys and the girl from the outfield, Mirei, were apparently coming for lunch as well.
As they walked up the broken street toward the looming apartment blocks, the woman introduced herself as Eiko, the Village Elder and coincidentally as Eiko, Aiba's mother. Maki held Shihori's hand tightly as they walked, still untrusting. They passed by Officer Katori's police box, and Shihori waved to him. He looked up from his still ridiculous stack of manila folders, his face going white as a sheet at the sight of her. But Eiko-san kept walking and so did the four teenagers, so Shihori didn't have much time for a reunion.
The streets of Matsuo Village were as empty as they'd been the previous time. There were no cars anywhere, and weeds grew up through some of the cracks in the cement. Eiko-san led them to an apartment block with a large "Block 8" painted on it. As they passed through the entrance hall, there were mailboxes for the residents. Only four had family name plates on them, even though there were nearly a hundred boxes.
"Matsuo Village doesn't have a lot of citizens, does it?" Shihori asked, following the group up the stairs to the second floor.
Nino looked back at her, obviously wanting to say something but holding himself back. Eiko-san only smiled, pulling a key ring from her pocket. "No," she said, her voice echoing off the walls, "we don't have very many now."
The hallway was fairly wide, with gaps where Shihori thought windows ought to be. The wind whipped through them, chilling Shihori to the bone. It had to be cold walking in these halls during the dead of winter, she thought. They were so open and exposed to the elements.
Eiko-san let them inside, and the boys barreled through, shedding their worn-out sneakers and collapsing on the floor of one of the other rooms, slamming the door behind them. Shihori didn't want to say anything, but it seemed like the Aiba family was rather poor. The entire room only had a worn old table and tatami mats that were covered in small stains. There was no TV, no stereo, no computer, not even curtains for the windows. There was another table in the corner with a small oil lamp on it. It had to be dark in here at night.
There were doors leading to other rooms, probably a bathroom and bedrooms. Shihori sat at the table, Maki sticking like glue to her side. The other girl, Mirei, was rather cute, and Shihori could hear her chirping voice chatting along with the older woman as they took plates out of cabinets and made the usual kitchen time noises.
It was rude of her to judge Aiba's home, especially when his mother had so kindly invited them inside. But how did they live this way? The whole village was in a state of decay. The roads, the weeds, the buildings. And Eiko-san and Aiba-kun both had known of her Grandpa, had said that he had helped them. What had he done for Matsuo Village and why had he never told anyone? Well, she remembered, he'd told Grandma but she'd never believed him. These people were here though, Mirei and Eiko-san in the kitchen, the three boys noisy in one of the bedrooms with the door closed.
Finally good smells came from the kitchen, although when Eiko-san emerged with a tray and Mirei followed, it was only rice and miso soup. And not the kind of miso Shihori's mother made, but the instant kind that had kind of a grainy texture until you swished it around. Maki didn't say a word, and Shihori thanked Eiko-san for the both of them. The boys came out of the bedroom, crowding around the table. Their faces were filthy and their clothes too, but they gobbled down the food like it was the best thing they'd ever eaten. Shihori felt ashamed, could feel her cheeks burning red for thinking so negatively about their lives here. So what if they were poor? They seemed rather happy.
When the meal was finished, Eiko-san ordered the boys to clean up, and they made all sorts of complaining noises before the three of them went into the kitchen. Mirei got up from the table, waving goodbye and saying "see you again sometime" with a kind of wistful sound in her voice. It must have been lonely to be Mirei-san, Shihori thought. She hadn't seen any other girls her age around Matsuo Village, not during the baseball game or with anyone in the streets.
That left the two cousins with Eiko-san, who had taken the least amount of food and had eaten very slowly. "It's remarkable that you've come to us not once but twice, Shihori-chan," Eiko-san mused, staring at her with a kind of pointed gaze. "But I suppose that was to be expected from someone who knew Horikita Taiyo."
"How did you know our Grandpa?" Shihori asked. "He never spoke about this village."
Eiko-san looked sad. "He brought us supplies. Bags of food, wonderful things we could store and use for months and not yet finish. He usually pushed it in a wheelbarrow, all the way from his home. He brought us newspapers and magazines." The older woman smiled. "He had better taste when I was younger, and when he got older he picked out some strange things to read. Stories about pirates or the movie stars he'd liked as a young man. Of course, we took everything gratefully."
They really were poor here, Shihori thought, if so much of their survival had counted on an elderly man wheeling things to town. She remembered her first meeting with Aiba, how he'd mentioned not having any new manga to read. "What does everyone do here? What are your jobs?"
Eiko-san frowned. "We do what we can with what we've been given. Though with Taiyo-san gone..."
"Why don't people believe you exist? Nobody believed Shihori when she came back from this village before," Maki piped up, speaking for the first time since they'd arrived in Block 8. Blunt as ever. Shihori made to apologize to Eiko-san for her cousin's rudeness, but that was when the boys returned from the kitchen.
"It's because we don't," Nino said. "Because we don't exist."
"You're hiding?" Maki asked, cocking her head curiously and staring straight at Nino. "On the run?"
Jun laughed, scratching at his hair. "That would be much more interesting."
Eiko-san drummed her fingers on the table. "It's a delicate situation..."
"It's not delicate, Mom," Aiba protested. "It's how things are and how they'll be forever. You may as well just tell her. And then she'll go home again and it won't matter because nobody would believe her anyway."
Shihori was suddenly hurt by Aiba's words. She could see that Aiba and Nino were in agreement; they both doubted her. But what was wrong with this place? Why did it rely on the kindness of people like her Grandpa? Why did everyone look at her and Maki so strangely? Why did Nino say that they didn't exist? They were standing right in front of her. She'd eaten their food, spoken with them.
"This town is cursed," Eiko-san said quietly, and a shiver ran up Shihori's spine. "It's why we're so empty. It's why we rely on people to help us. It's why nobody believes you. Matsuo Village is not real..."
Shihori's mouth dropped open, looking from Eiko-san to her son to her son's two friends. To the sparsely decorated apartment, to the other buildings rising up just out the window. "But you're real! We're here right now!"
"We're here today," Eiko-san said. "And tomorrow we won't be."
"I don't understand," Shihori answered, more confused than she'd ever been. Her Grandpa's warning about the forest rang in her ears. Officer Katori's words three years earlier, how happy he'd been that she'd come to the village on that specific day, the day her grandfather died. Today was exactly three years from then, the exact same day.
"Today is the only day," Nino said. "Just today. And not tomorrow or the day after that."
"Or the day after that either," Jun added.
Maki clung to her. "Shii-chan, I want to go home."
Shihori elbowed her cousin. "Don't be rude..."
"It's not rude," Eiko-san said, shaking her head before waving at her son sadly. "Ma-kun, you really should take the girls home..."
Shihori found herself thumping her hand on the table. "But I don't understand. You're here!"
"Come back tomorrow, and see for yourself," Nino challenged them, sounding almost mean. "See how real we are."
She was almost as scared as Maki was now. What were these people talking about? Curses and not being real. They'd been so welcoming, but Shihori and Maki's curiosity and questions had riled them up, made them upset. Nobody knew they were here with these people, who were still technically strangers. Their parents didn't even believe in Matsuo Village. Shihori doubted any of these people would do her harm, but they were being so weird. A village couldn't just be there one day and not another, that was absurd.
Shihori didn't get a chance to challenge anything else Eiko-san said. Nino, Aiba, and Jun were lacing up their worn-out sneakers, hinting that it was time to go. They left Block 8 in a hush broken only by the wind blowing down from the mountains and over the hills.
Maki walked on ahead. Matsuo Village seemed extraordinary to her, and Nino and Jun stood on either side of her, answering the million questions she was asking them. Shihori couldn't hear the answers. She was too busy staring around at the buildings, feeling the road under her shoes. It was a road the same as any other, at least in terms of what made it a road. The buildings were buildings, the scattered people were people.
But as she looked closer, she noticed an even more obvious emptiness. The little grocery store didn't have bins full of fresh produce like the ones back home. She peeked inside, saw half empty shelves loaded up with gigantic bags of rice and other items stored in tin cans. There was a spout in the middle of one of the apartment courtyards, and two small boys were pumping water out into a wooden bucket.
Her cousin had gotten far ahead when Aiba came up beside her, giving her a bit of a nudge. "Come on, I've got other stuff to get done today."
"Was it true what Nino said?" she asked. "That you'll be gone tomorrow?"
Aiba nodded. "It's the curse on the village. It's hard to explain because it's, you know, pretty impossible. But we vanish. We pop up one day a year, this day in November."
It sounded silly, but she didn't say so. "But how did the curse happen?"
"It was when my mom was younger, but she and the other adults don't like to talk about it." He kicked a pebble and it skittered down the road. "So I honestly don't know why. Somebody pissed somebody off..." He looked over, blushing a bit about his rude language. "Sorry."
"But you can leave. You can walk me home right?"
"I can go wherever I want today," he explained. "Just today. It's how we survive. People like your grandpa helped, but some of us use this day to go into town and trade for things we need. Help out at a farm or something to earn money to use in the stores. Or some people use this day to leave the village."
Shihori was confused. "But what about the curse?"
"If you're in Matsuo Village at midnight, you go away just like we do. Of course we don't actually go away," Aiba said with a roll of his eyes. "But yeah, that's why there aren't many people left. Too many people hate it, so they leave. Move away and start a new life elsewhere."
They were quiet for a while, seeing Nino and Jun laugh ahead of them as Maki's head pivoted back and forth, firing off questions. Her cousin seemed far less frightened now that they'd left the small apartment in Block 8 and its sad walls desperately in need of paint. Despite her initial quiet, Maki had always been a curious girl.
A strange village - here one day and gone the rest. What kind of curse could do that? It seemed even Aiba didn't know, but yet he stayed. He and his friends, his mother. People like Officer Katori and the people in the outfield. Mirei-san. But even if it vanished, Matsuo Village still had to be there somehow, if only because time carried on. Aiba had grown older these three years.
"Don't you want to leave?" she asked him slowly. "If the whole town moves away, then there's no curse."
He shrugged. "My mom's the Village Elder, and her dad was before her. She won't leave, no matter how hard it is to live here. Matsuo Village is her home, curse or no curse."
She couldn't imagine such a life, only being able to go anywhere on one day a year. She understood now why her Grandpa had befriended Matsuo Village and why he'd helped them. As they made their way out of town and down into the valley, Shihori felt guilty. "This is your one chance to leave, this day," she said. "One day to be normal, and this is the second time you've had to use up your time to walk me around instead. I'm sorry, Aiba-kun."
"It's alright," he said. "When you see the same people every day for the rest of the year, it's kind of nice to see a stranger."
She had an idea, although it was definitely not an idea her parents would like if they found out. Then again, nothing about what she and Maki had done that day was something their parents would like.
"You have until midnight, right? Well Maki and I have until sunset before we have to get back. Why don't you come into town with us?"
--
Aiba floated the idea past the other two boys. Jun almost said yes, but he ended up shaking his head halfway through their walk in the woods. He'd promised his father he'd haul in some wood, help stock up for winter. But Aiba and Nino were seemingly pleased with the idea of a day of fun.
They found the bikes, and the boys both insisted on riding. Nino helped Maki to sit on the handlebars, and they sped off, their laughter bouncing off the trees. Shihori had never seen her cousin so happy, especially with how shy she'd been. Maybe learning the secret of Matsuo Village, the still unconfirmed secret, had unlocked something in her brain, made her excited and eager. And maybe she also thought Nino was cute - it had only taken a boy in a secret town to change her mind about boys being gross. It probably helped that Nino was older, someone to look up to, unlike the boys in her class.
Aiba sighed, twisting the seat of the bike up until it was aligned with his height. He patted the handlebars. "Wanna ride up here?"
She crossed her arms. "It's my bike, you should walk."
"All the way to town?" he complained. "No fair."
"Well," she said, seeing Nino steering crookedly, Maki holding on for dear life as they moved around the curve in the road. "You pedal, and I'll sit on the seat. Handlebars are dangerous."
He laughed at her. "Whatever you say, Shihori-sama." He patted the seat.
She settled herself on the bike seat as Aiba stepped up and onto the pedals. It wobbled a bit, and she put her hands at his waist reflexively to hold on. Gradually he got them moving, pumping his long legs as they hurried after Nino and Maki. Aiba's waist was kind of skinny, but he was warm and very, very real.
Hachimantai wasn't a large city by any means but it was large enough. There were stores and street lights and restaurants. Today she was able to see the town through Aiba and Nino's eyes. Usually Shihori had only come into town to buy sweets or accompany her mother to the grocery store to help restock Grandma's kitchen. But today Aiba and Nino wanted to just take the time and look around.
It was hard for them without any money, but the two older boys walked slowly from store window to store window, looking at sneakers and clothes. Shihori only had her allowance in the small change purse she kept in her pocket, imagining that Maki didn't have much more. But neither of the boys asked her to buy them anything. They just pointed, their eyes going wide, their smiles bittersweet.
It was the only time they got to experience the world beyond Matsuo Village, and Shihori couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like to come out, see technology and cars and grocery stores full of food. It was like they were taking everything in, memorizing it to last them another year.
They ended up in a small cafe, and even though the boys protested, she bought them each an ice cream sundae with extra whipped cream. She met Maki's eyes across the table, and her cousin seemed to be feeling the same. Their Grandpa would have been happy to see them, even if they weren't supposed to be alone with boys. He would have been happy they'd become friends, if only for a day.
Because of the lateness of the year, the sun started to set by 5:00 and after browsing through a shop full of manga and a magic shop that Nino took an interest in, it was time for the girls to get back to their grandparents' house. The boys were planning to stay in town just to watch one of the TVs in the window of the electronics store since it was the only TV they'd get to watch all year.
While Maki headed for their bikes and Nino wandered off toward the electronics store, Aiba looked at her shyly. "Thanks again for the ice cream. That was definitely something your Grandpa could never bring us."
"Well, you helped me too," she admitted. "And I was kind of mean to you last time."
"Yeah, you were."
She gave him a punch in the arm. "You're still a jerk!"
He laughed, and she wondered if she'd ever hear the sound of it again. She was suddenly full of an odd sadness, knowing that it was unlikely she'd come north again any time soon. It was hard for her father to get away, and she couldn't really make up excuses to visit Grandma during school term. When would she even see Aiba again? Or Nino? The others she'd met that day?
"Don't be sad," he teased her. "Your face looks weird when you're sad."
She felt her cheeks grow hot. "Stop looking at my face all the time."
"What am I supposed to look at? Your feet?"
She turned her back on him, wondering why a boy she'd only met twice could get her so worked up, could make her feel so much in such a short amount of time. She decided not to think about it. "I have a question before I go. Can things only be dropped off at your village on days like today? When did my Grandpa visit?"
He sounded happier at this change of topic. "Anytime really. We can find things whenever. We just can't, you know...pick them up when you're there?"
"So you're...invisible?"
He chuckled. "I guess you could say that. I don't know, stop by tomorrow. You'll see."
Aiba made it all sound so normal, but Shihori supposed that was because this sort of life seemed normal to him. Matsuo Village and its strange curse was his normal everyday existence.
"Well maybe I'll bring you something. I don't know when I'll visit again, but I can leave stuff for you whenever I visit Grandma."
"You don't have to do that," he said, making her turn around. His smile was so bright she couldn't look away. "But if you do, it'll make us happy. Just like your Grandpa."
She said goodbye, not wanting to keep him from his TV and his last few hours. It was strange, seeing the boy in front of her and thinking he'd be impossible to see the next day. He gave her a wave and a "see ya later, Shihori-sama" before turning to run after Nino.
She and Maki biked back to the house, telling their parents of an uneventful day in town. Book stores and sundaes and not much else to say. But when they went to bed that night, still tucked in the old futons from when their parents were young, she and Maki talked excitedly about their strange day until their voices grew scratchy and sleep claimed them.
When they woke the next day they had breakfast and made their excuses, taking the bikes out and going the same roundabout way to Matsuo Village.
The buildings were there, still on the hills, but things had changed. The misty fog nearly engulfed the whole town, and there were no signs of life. No children in the courtyards, no people in the streets. She and Maki slowly walked down the main street of town. The sight of the place now sent a shiver down her spine.
The apartment blocks were deteriorated. Stairwells had collapsed, windows were broken. Everything was covered in dust and rubble. Block 8 was impossible to enter - the door was locked, and the ceiling had caved in at the other entryway. The stores were empty, the floors covered in shattered glass and empty grocery bags. Officer Katori's police box was ransacked, and the roof was half missing. The weeds that had poked out of the streets the day before were a wild garden, growing and climbing up the walls. Rats ran in and out of cracks in the cement block buildings. Birds picked around in mounds of garbage.
There was no Aiba-kun, no Nino. No Eiko-san and Jun and Mirei. No Officer Katori. The day before, Matsuo Village had been alive, the remaining people living as best they could with what they had. How had it grown so ruined overnight? The curse was real, and the place was dangerous.
When Shihori turned around, she saw tears in Maki's eyes, her hand over her mouth in shock. They hadn't dreamed yesterday up, it was impossible. They'd had lunch here, had watched the baseball game. Shihori remembered sitting on the bike and letting Aiba pedal, feeling the worn cotton of his t-shirt as she held onto him tightly.
Maki ran, heading back for the valley and the comfort of the trees and Grandma's house beyond. Shihori let her go, spending a few minutes more in the village, desperate to find any traces of life. Instead a giant black bird cawed at her from where he was perched atop a tall wooden pole that had once had power lines tethered to it. She could feel tears pricking her own eyes.
She made it to the edge of town, tears streaming silently down her cheeks, before it happened. It was cold, so much colder without people here, but suddenly there was warmth, like fingers tugging at her wrist.
She whirled around, looking left and looking right. "Aiba-kun?" she whispered into the chilly air, her voice shaking.
Nothing. Nobody. Just the bird staring her down from the other side of town.
--
Grandpa's words followed Shihori through junior high. Not to enter the forest, that she'd only regret it. She regretted it, if only because she couldn't see Eiko-san, her son, or his friends. The thought of the day in Matsuo and Hachimantai haunted her, images and memories flashing in her dreams often.
It haunted her cousin too. It was after Christmas, at the turn of the year after their joint visit to Matsuo, that she started receiving handwritten letters from Maki regularly. They started out normally enough, with Maki talking about school, her life in Kyushu, taking a cooking class with her mother at the community center. But eventually Matsuo Village came up and started taking over the cousins' letters back and forth.
They speculated about the curse. Shihori's parents bought her a computer for her fourteenth birthday to use for school, but instead she spent hours trying to find any evidence of Matsuo Village. She only found websites talking about abandoned buildings, the ones she saw on the hills, the ones that had decayed so badly. There was little information about the place, a company town that had been under construction and never actually inhabited. This was a lie, Shihori was certain of it, but nobody talked about it on message boards or websites. People just wondered if it was haunted, or geeked out about visiting the place and snapping photos but nobody actually did.
She shared her limited findings with Maki. Even as her cousin grew older, getting more involved at school with student council and sports, she always made time to write Shihori letters. "I wonder what Nino and Aiba-kun are doing today?" Maki would write, and then she'd answer her own question. Baseball or basketball, chasing each other around the valley and telling stupid jokes. It was Maki's opinion that Matsuo Village was still there and the place they'd seen, the ruins, was the real illusion from the curse.
Shihori didn't know what to believe. She'd seen Matsuo Village, but she'd also seen what was left the next day. How solid and real it had been too.
They visited Grandma's place in the summertime, and when Shihori was fifteen her parents let her take the train up north on her own without them. Sadly her cousin didn't go at the same time. Maki had reported during her spring break that the ruins were the same as always, but that she'd left a basket of freshly baked cookies and other sweets on one day and returned the next to find the basket empty. Shihori suspected the blackbirds and rats, but Maki was certain that Nino and his friends had come for the treats.
Aiba-kun had even said she could leave things for them any time. She decided to test the theory herself. After a long morning helping Grandma clean, she left the older woman to her afternoon TV soap operas and headed out to the storage shed. Grandpa's old wheelbarrow was there, the one he'd apparently used to bring supplies to Matsuo Village.
She loaded it up with the magazines cluttering up Grandma's table, saying she was taking them off to be recycled. She'd also packed her suitcase half full of manga from home. It had been a real pain to get on and off the trains with it, but she decided it was worth it. Once the wheelbarrow was heavy with her donations, she took off into the woods.
It was miserable, hot even under the trees. This summer was seeing a heat wave, even north in Iwate where it rarely got that way. She was sweaty and disgusting and bug-bitten before she even made it to the valley. It had taken her twice as long as she'd anticipated, not really remembering how steep the pathway was downward. She'd nearly toppled the wheelbarrow a dozen times and had lost two of the old fashion magazines that had probably been her mother's.
Even with the summer sunshine Matsuo Village was still shrouded in its mysterious fog. She huffed and puffed, wishing she was as athletic as her cousin. Maki ran track at her junior high school while Shihori had simply grown lazier over the years. She'd gotten a little plump, spending hours with manga or on her computer checking for new evidence about Matsuo Village. The wheelbarrow nearly got away from her and she had to almost run with it down into the valley. How had Grandpa managed this for so long?
She then had to push the wheelbarrow back up the town hill, almost glad that nobody was around to see her. There were still birds and rats, and she bit her lip to try to not freak out. Where would be the best place to leave things? Were the people of Matsuo Village here, seeing her wheel in the books? There had been no library that she could remember, and there certainly wasn't one in the ruins.
The best kept building was Block 3, one of the first buildings that ringed the town. Despite all the decay, the door still opened and closed firmly and hadn't been locked. She could smell rot when she tugged it open, hurrying to pull her shirt up to cover her nose. Animals had been living in here, or maybe they still were. It smelled like their waste. But they hopefully would leave the books alone if she brought them up higher.
Leaving the wheelbarrow at the bottom of the staircase, still intact and without any debris, she went up and down the stairs with armfuls of books, leaving them on the second floor landing in piles. It didn't smell as bad up here. Maybe the animals left this floor alone, having made their homes well enough at ground level. She was reminded of the passageway in Block 8, remembering the sound of Eiko-san's keys jangling as she led them to the Aiba family's apartment.
It only urged her on, still sweating, but moving the books and magazines until her wheelbarrow was empty. She wished she'd brought a snack or even a water bottle, pushing the wheelbarrow out of the building and sitting down against the wall, leaning her head back against the concrete.
It had been quite the undertaking, but she wouldn't know until tomorrow if it had done any good. She shut her eyes, taking in the quiet. It had always been quiet in Iwate. It was always such a contrast from Tokyo, the absence of honking car horns and trains rattling down the tracks. There was only the wind rushing through the trees, the sounds of birds. It was even quieter in Matsuo, and she easily lost herself in thinking about some of the stories she and Maki wrote back and forth.
Their written letters, speculating what their Matsuo Village friends did to occupy their time, had become more complex over the years. Shihori found herself imagining she was in Matsuo too, pumping water from the well, playing baseball in the valley. She was fifteen now and Aiba-kun and his friends were eighteen. In the world Shihori really lived in, they'd be graduating from high school, getting jobs or preparing to go to university. But what sort of future did the people of Matsuo Village dream about? Did they want to stay or leave?
Sometimes when Shihori was feeling down, she remembered Aiba-kun's teasing, the mocking way he'd called her "Shihori-sama." When the girls in school found notes in their lockers, handed out chocolates to boys on Valentine's Day, Shihori didn't participate as much as she could have. She made chocolates for the most popular boys in class as a courtesy, not expecting any result. She found herself wishing she could make chocolates for Aiba-kun and his friends, the people who'd actually appreciate them. She passed notes for her friends, arranged group meet-ups at cafes and the shopping center, and then took a step back.
She was certain of it now - even if she'd only seen him twice at age nine and age twelve, Shihori was certain that none of the other boys in school could compare to Aiba-kun. To his goofy laugh and his weird smile. Even if she'd only seen him those two times, she and Maki had spent the last three years wondering about him and his friends. Imagining entire years' worth of activities for them. Shihori suspected that she spent even more time pondering it than her cousin did. It was silly, but she'd created an Aiba-kun in her mind that was so perfect that she didn't really mind if the boys at school just wanted to be friends, only took her aside privately so they could ask her to pass along feelings to one of her friends.
Boys could come and go, Shihori decided, but she'd always have Matsuo Village and Aiba-kun waiting with a smirk to walk her through the woods.
--
When she returned the next day, itching at the mosquito bites dotting her legs, her heart swelled when she went to Block 3 and found the piles gone. Not ransacked by animals, but all of it gone. Given a home.
She smiled, running out into the middle of the town, arms outstretched. "See!" she called out, "See, now you've got your manga, so you can't complain!"
This became Shihori's new routine. She spent more and more time with Grandma, using all of her school breaks during high school to take the train north and bring new manga. During spring break and summer, she toted things up north. The spending money her parents gave her to use in town went to buy sacks of rice, tins of preserved vegetables. New pots and pans and utensils she had to hide in the storage shed until she could bring them to the village and not let Grandma find out. Bags full of clothes from secondhand shops with new buttons Shihori sewed on herself diligently in the small bedroom with the old futon.
And each time without fail the items had been claimed the next day. Matsuo Village really was there, Aiba-kun was there and she was helping him.
She turned sixteen, she turned seventeen. She returned to the northern greenery, to the house among the cedars. Panda the mutt died peacefully in his sleep of old age, Grandma and Shihori by his side. Otherwise Iwate remained largely unchanged. And every time she came home from Iwate, Tokyo seemed too loud, too crowded. People with the newest fashions, the newest books. Fast food and cup noodles and studying endlessly for university entrance exams.
She still went out with her friends occasionally, but they accused her of growing distant. Complained that she spent too much time in her room, too much time not going to the department store to get makeup samples at the designer counters, too much time skipping out on school events. "We've got the perfect guy for you," her friends always moaned. "But he definitely wouldn't want some weirdo who stays locked up in her room!"
Her parents joined in, wondering why she stayed in so much, messing around on the computer, fabric all over the floor for the next batch of clothes she planned to sneak up north. "Look at your cousin Maki. She's excelling in school!" Her cousin Maki had grown up totally perfect, always making time for Shihori's increasingly lengthy letters and speculation, but still having good grades and throwing herself into her school activities with enthusiasm. All around, Maki was wonderful and Shihori was a hermit with a sewing machine.
Shihori graduated high school with little fanfare, having decided to put off university. She knew that her parents found her odd, had been concerned about her for years now. Perhaps they thought something terrible had happened to her that day in the woods, the day they believed she'd made up everything about Matsuo Village and what she'd seen. Something had happened, of course, but it wasn't what they thought.
Part Three