Book Girl and the Famished Spirit (10 page)

Who is your “he”?

But my mouth and feet were both paralyzed.
Now—I have to ask now. I may never see her again. Why am I hesitating?!

Her soft, chestnut-colored hair billowed around her as she passed by me.

That same smell tickled my nostrils again—a clean scent that filled me with dread, which I had smelled somewhere before.

Unable to speak, I stood rooted to the spot, watching a phantom go by.

On the first day of midterms, I overslept.

I had been thinking back over everything that happened in the chemistry lab the night before and hadn’t taken any time to study.

I woke up at my desk, and when I looked at my clock, I saw it was morning.

Gasping, I ran into my classroom. I asked Akutagawa if he had seen Tohko yet.

“She left that for you,” he said and pointed at my desk.

It was a paperback copy of Sōseki Natsume’s
I Am a Cat
.

I flipped cautiously through it and found a violet bookmark. Tohko had written on it in big letters in Magic Marker: “You stink!”

I was staggered by this bald-faced insult that was utterly devoid of vocabulary or grace. It was so unlike a book girl.

Geez, what a childish thing to do. She must be pretty mad
…

Kotobuki was glaring at me like always, too. Nothing but headaches.

After a crushing defeat on my exam, school was out for the day. Ryuto was drinking a soda at our usual restaurant. He brushed
aside my anxiety. “Don’t sweat it. Tohko’s real easy. Just leave her alone for two or three days, and she’ll get over it.”

“No, I know she’s totally pigheaded. She’s going to hold this grudge for a long time, just like Anne of Green Gables swore she would never talk to Gilbert again.”

“Wow, you know Tohko pretty well, huh?”

He grinned slyly, as if this wasn’t actually a huge problem for me, and suddenly something clicked.

“You know, this is all your fault in the first place. I’ve been wondering for a while now. Why did you get me involved in this?”

“Just ’cause you and Hotaru go to the same school.”

I glared at him as he dodged the question.

“That can’t be the only reason. I’ve watched you the last couple of days, and I can tell. You get things done, and you can butter people up, and you’re smart. You would be perfect as the lead character in a detective novel—unlike me. You don’t need help from a guy like me. So why did you drag me into this? You didn’t just want a bumbling Watson around because the detective’s brilliance stands out too much, did you?”

Ryuto shrugged and gave a rueful smile.

“I’m not such an awful guy. I just wanted to find out what Tohko’s author was like.”

My cheeks flared with heat. Did he just call me Tohko’s author? What was he saying?

“And what does that mean?” I shot back to hide how much I was reeling.

Ryuto rested his chin in his hand and looked me right in the eye.

“Exactly what I said. I wanted to find out about you. When Tohko told you to stay out of it, I realized you were the Konoha she was always talking about. She’d mentioned all sorts of stuff before that, so I had been wondering about you, but when I saw
you, I started to wonder even more. So I went to your school to meet you. I asked for your help with Hotaru because I needed an excuse to talk to you.”

“This sounds like a pickup line. You don’t like boys, do you?”

A carefree, childlike smile came over his masculine face.

“Nope. I love girls too much.”

“I’m just Tohko’s errand boy in charge of snacks. She eats the improv stories I write and then gripes about how it’s too watery or there’s not enough salt or the organization is jumbled and there’s no mellowness. And just recently she was sobbing about how spicy something was and that she had to eat some Joan Aiken stories to get rid of the taste. And anyway, I’m not an author.”

Miu’s spiteful eyes cut into my mind and filled it, digging her talons into my heart.

I gritted my teeth against the sharp pain that shot through me.

No—!

I don’t want to feel that way anymore!
An author is the last thing I would ever want to be!

“Well, whatever. Let’s leave that to wrap up later. I haven’t read anything you’ve written yet anyway,” Ryuto said meaningfully and then sucked at the straw in his soda.

I took small, deep breaths and calmed myself down. I took the notes Tohko had left out of my bag and arranged them on the table.

“… Let’s get back on track. These are the notes we found in our mailbox. There were some with blood spatters or burn marks, too, but I don’t think Amemiya wrote those, so I didn’t bring them.”

Ryuto looked at the scraps of paper—“hate you,” “a ghost,” “help”—and frowned. He picked up each note in his thick fingers and peered closely at it. When he saw the note that said “4-5,” his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What are these numbers?”

“I don’t know. Though Tohko says they mean ‘death (4) finds you (5).”

“That’s… pleasant.” Ryuto smirked. “Well, why don’t we just ask Hotaru?”

“What?”

I gaped. Ryuto looked up at someone and his eyes crinkled in a smile. “Hey there, Hotaru.”

I looked over in surprise and saw Amemiya standing in the restaurant, looking confused.

Ryuto went over and put an arm around her shoulders, then brought her back. She was thus forced to sit next to him.

“Why are… you here, Inoue?” Amemiya asked in a soft whisper, looking at my face.

I hadn’t told Ryuto about how I had seen Kayano in the chemistry lab or how I had talked to Amemiya in the library. I had no idea how I should react.

Ryuto answered flippantly, a smile carved into his face as he spoke.

“We’re best buds. Right, Konoha?”

“… I met Ryuto a couple days ago. Sorry I didn’t tell you. I wasn’t trying to hide it. There just wasn’t a good time to mention it.”

Amemiya looked down.

“Anyway, order something, Hotaru.”

“… I’m sorry, I just ate.”

“I doubt that. Today I swear I’m gonna get you to eat somethin’. Harumi? I need a chicken salad, corn soup, and French toast.”

As Ryuto gave his order to the waitress he knew, Amemiya folded her thin hands in her lap, knit her eyebrows, and shrank in on herself with a morose look on her face.

“Hotaru? Were you the one who left these notes in the book club’s mailbox?”

Ryuto showed her the note that said “help,” and Amemiya raised her head slightly. Tears filled her eyes, and she looked back down.

“I… don’t know who did that.”

“When you say it like that, I can’t really believe you. You wrote these. You heard about the mailbox from me and went to find it, didn’t you? And you leave these notes every night. Why would you do somethin’ like that? Did you want someone to listen to you? Did you want someone to help you? You could have just told me. I’ll help you. What is it that’s botherin’ you? When we first met that night in the storm, you were wearin’ an old sailor suit and ridin’ the swings… Why were you doin’ that?”

Ryuto peppered her with questions.

“Is it connected to your guardian somehow?”

Amemiya shuddered, but she kept her head down. My heart ached to see her bite down on her bottom lip so hard.

“Maybe I should go,” I offered quietly, but she shook her head.

“No… you stay, Inoue. I’m… going home.”

Then she looked at Ryuto with her beautiful eyes brimming with deep sadness.

“Thank you for being with me all this time, Ryu. I came here today to tell you I want to break up. I think this should be the last time we see each other.”

Ryuto’s eyes widened, and he threw himself at Amemiya in a panic.

“What are you talkin’ about?! Why all of a sudden? Did your guardian say somethin’ to you? That guy in the sunglasses who followed me around was your uncle, wasn’t he? And wasn’t he the one who had those punks attack me? It was, wasn’t it? Hotaru?”

Amemiya answered in a thin whisper, “You haven’t left me… like all the other boys I’ve dated. So it would be bad… if we kept going.”

“What do you mean?”

“… I’m sorry.”

Amemiya picked up her bag and stood, just as the food arrived. Ryuto grabbed Amemiya’s arm and pulled her back into her chair.

“Eat. If you eat the whole thing, maybe I’ll think about breakin’ up.”

His face was wild, filled with naked rage. Amemiya looked back at him with tears in her eyes, but finally she hung her head and picked up a spoon.

As soon as she dipped the silver spoon into the creamy yellow soup, Amemiya’s grip on the spoon tightened. She probably would have dropped it otherwise.

She seemed to waver at that point, but apparently resolved, she ladled up some soup and brought it to her mouth.

Something strange happened then: Amemiya covered her mouth with her hand, as if she’d just swallowed poison, and she fell out of her chair and onto her knees on the floor.

The spoon made a cold sound as it fell from her hand and struck the floor.

Amemiya pressed her hands over her mouth; her eyes widened and her body convulsed.

“Hotaru, are you—?”

Ryuto knelt on the floor beside her and put his arms around her.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?”

Shaking her head, Amemiya assured him that she was fine. She glanced toward one corner of the restaurant, and her eyes grew wider again.

Terror was written clearly on her face.

Amemiya shoved Ryuto away powerfully and grabbed her bag.

“I’m sorry. I have to go. I’m sorry, I really am,” she murmured repeatedly, her face ashen, and she ran toward the door.

Ryuto chased after her. I got up and followed them, too.

Before she could get out of the restaurant, Ryuto caught her shoulder.

“Are you angry that I tried to force you to eat? I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have. I’ll walk you home. You don’t look too good.”

“No!” Amemiya shrieked, throwing Ryuto off. She looked desperate to get away from us and escape the restaurant as soon as she possibly could.

“You can’t ever talk to me again. Good-bye.”

With that, Amemiya ran out the door.

“Dammit…”

When we got back to our table, Ryuto hugged his head and fell across the table.

“Looks like I messed up, Konoha. I didn’t mean to back her into a corner like that.”

The sight of Ryuto in such low spirits made me realize that he really was a boy in high school, despite how much bigger he was than me.

He may have been a smart aleck and a hit with women and decisive and someone who got things done, like the butt-kicking hero of a detective novel, but there were some things that even he couldn’t do, and even he could get depressed.

I felt closer to him than I had before.

“Cheer up, Ryuto. I think you showed Amemiya that you’re honestly worried about her. I’ll try talking to her tomorrow at school.”

“Thanks.”

Still, Ryuto kept his face buried against the table for a while.

I couldn’t get my mind off the terror Amemiya had shown just before she shoved Ryuto.

What had she seen? It was definitely over there somewhere…

I remembered where she had been looking and glanced subtly in that direction.

There was a potted plant and behind it a table. There was a coffee cup on the table, but the seat was empty.

Just as I started to convince myself that there was nothing odd about any of that, I realized steam was rising up from the coffee cup.

There was still coffee in it, and it was fresh.

I looked more closely.

There were no bags on the table or the chair.

The person who sat at that table had left without ever touching the coffee, which was still warm.

“Let’s make the rules,” he said.

“From now on, you can’t eat anything unless I give it to you.”

The first day, she took her lunch at school. She had not been given breakfast, so her stomach ached with hunger and she was drooling. It was only to be expected. And it would have been too embarrassing for her to be the only person not eating lunch.

He punished her, locking her in a basement room, and did not give her food for three days.

Shut inside the room, she crouched down, hugging her empty stomach, desperately fighting back the thirst and hunger clawing at the walls of her stomach. She licked the water that dropped from the toilet, stretching out her life.

The morning of the fourth day, he opened the door and brought her food. He fed her with his own hand a sweet vegetable soup and soft bread with chestnuts in it.