It was four hours of walking from the community center until I got back to the apartment at last. The smell of my own place was comforting and familiar.
I was drenched in sweat, and my feet were blistered. I was opening the door to the changing room to take a shower when I had a sudden thought that it would be better to allow Miyagi to go first. But if I was too deferential to her, the distance Miyagi had intentionally built between us might be destroyed.
I resisted the urge to stay in the hot water and instead washed myself quickly, then got dressed and headed back to the living room. If past experience was any indication, Miyagi only had free reign to shower and eat when I was sleeping. So I decided to return to bed.
I closed my eyes and feigned sleep, then heard the quiet sounds of Miyagi going to take her shower. I was about to sit up when I heard her footsteps returning, so I quickly shut my eyes again.
"Mr. Kusunoki," she said.
I pretended not to hear her.
"Are you asleep?" she asked quietly, coming to my bedside. "I only ask, of course, because you seem to be faking it. And if so, I hope it's out of consideration for me… Sweet dreams. I will borrow your shower."
When the door to the changing room shut, I sat up and looked in the corner of the room, where she was absent. Would she sleep in that corner again today? Would she repeat that pattern of a few minutes asleep and a few minutes awake all night, in that uncomfortable position?
As a test, I sat down there, assumed her posture, and tried to nod off. But no matter how long I waited, I did not fall asleep. She returned, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked, "What are you doing over here? You should be in your bed."
"Why don't you take your own advice? Use my bed. It's crazy that you actually sleep here."
"I'm fine with being crazy. I'm used to it."
I lay down on the bed and scooted to the edge. "I'll sleep on the left side. No matter what happens, I won't trespass or look on the right side. That's probably the perfect place to monitor me from. You're free to use it or not as you see fit, but I'm going to be sleeping right here."
That was my compromise. I had no reason to think Miyagi would accept the idea of snoozing in my bed while I stayed on the floor. And she wasn't likely to agree if I gave her the offer of simply sleeping next to me.
"Are you sleeptalking, Mr. Kusunoki?" Miyagi asked, just to be sure.
I ignored her and closed my eyes. About twenty minutes later, I could tell Miyagi had gotten into the bed next to me. Before long, I heard quiet, even breathing behind me. She must have been exhausted, too.
We shared the bed with our backs to each other. I was fully aware that my plan was totally self-serving. All I was doing was making things harder for Miyagi. She wouldn't have wanted to do this, originally. The years of toughness and experience she'd built up as a monitor could only be damaged by someone being too kind to her. Especially when it was just an arbitrary, fickle notion from a man who was about to die. Kindness like that rarely helped others; if anything, it hurt them.
But Miyagi still chose to accept my kindness, a gracious act of her own. She probably wanted to honor my attempt at generosity. Or maybe she really was just that tired.
I woke up to the reddish glow of sunset. I assumed Miyagi would have been awake for a while, but she had just woken up, too, and was sitting up, narrowing her eyes against the light. The moment our gazes met, we both looked away. After having been so deep asleep, her hair and clothes were disheveled; she looked utterly defenseless.
"I was a bit tired today," she explained. "I will sleep in my usual spot tomorrow."
She did add "But thank you," however.
I plodded along through the sunset with her. The cicadas buzzed and squealed.
Perhaps as a reaction to the incident with the bed, Miyagi seemed to be more distant than usual.
I went to withdraw what little savings I had at the convenience store and saw that the month's pay from my job had been deposited.
This would be the last of my budget, I thought. I had to use it very carefully.
After a brief look at the setting sun from the reddish-brown pedestrian bridge, I went to a beef bowl place for a cheap meal. It was the kind of restaurant where you bought a ticket from a machine that was redeemed at the counter, so Miyagi purchased her own and handed it to me so I could do it for her.
"I've got nothing left to do," I said after finishing my miso soup. "I've done everything that was on my bucket list. What should I do now?"
"Whatever you want. You must have hobbies, right?"
"Yeah. They were listening to music and reading… But thinking about it now, those two things were a means for me to live. I used music and books to come to a compromise with the worthless life I was leading. Now that I have no need to keep going, they're not as crucial as they used to be."
"Then you could change the way you consume them. Now you can simply appreciate the pure beauty they hold."
"But no matter what, it always feels off to me. There's always a sense of isolation, like, 'Oh, this has nothing to do with me.' It's like almost everything in the world is meant for people who are going to keep on living. I guess that's obvious. Nobody makes things for people who are about to die."
A fiftysomething man stirring his beef around nearby shot a suspicious look at the guy sitting alone and talking about death.
"Is there nothing you enjoy in a more simplistic way? For example, maybe you like looking at ruins, or counting the railroad ties as you walk along the tracks, or playing video games on systems that were abandoned a decade ago…"
"Those are very specific examples. Were there people like that who you had to monitor before?"
"Yes. There was also a person who liked to lie faceup on the bed of his pickup truck and stare at the sky. He spent the last month of his life doing that. He took the money he got from selling his life span, handed it all to an elderly person he'd never met, and said, 'I want you to drive this truck around somewhere no one will bother you about it.'"
"Sounds very peaceful. But that might actually be the smartest way to do it, I suppose."
"It was surprisingly enjoyable, watching the landscape shoot backward like that. It was very novel."
I tried to imagine the scene. A blue sky on some distant, winding country road, a gentle breeze, and the vibration of the truck, on and on forever. All the memories and regrets and everything else that came to your mind, falling out onto the road to be left behind. The sensation of everything growing more distant the farther you went seemed very appropriate for a dying person.
"Could you tell me more about that? Whatever doesn't violate workplace ethics or personal privacy is fine," I said.
"I'll tell you all you want to know when we get back to the apartment," Miyagi said. "People will be suspicious if we do it here."
On the way home, we took a big detour through a little sunflower field, around the old building at the elementary school, and past a graveyard built onto a sloping hill. There must have been some kind of event going on at the middle school, because we passed some suntanned children smelling of deodorant and insect spray.
It was a night of damp, humid air, as if the summer had been compressed into one sensation. Back at the apartment, I got onto the Cub with Miyagi, and we left again. Because we were both wearing light clothing today, I felt the softness of her body more clearly and was so distracted by it that I nearly ran a red light. My panicked braking only pressed her closer against me, and I prayed she couldn't feel how fast my heart was racing.
We went up a hill and parked close to the best vantage point over the whole neighborhood, where we bought two coffees from a vending machine and took in the night view. The residential area was below us, glowing with a humble orange light, with the city center farther in the distance.
When we got back, I brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and listened to Miyagi. With a rhythm as if she were reading a children's storybook, she told me tales of her past monitoring subjects, as long as it did no harm. Even the most plain, featureless stories of hers gave me more comfort than any great literary work.
The next day, I resumed folding cranes with the origami paper I had left over and thought about what I should do next. Miyagi sat across from me at the table and folded them with me. Maybe you could just do this the entire time, she suggested. It wouldn't be bad to die buried in paper cranes, I said, and scooped up a handful of them and tossed them into the air. She followed my lead and scattered them over my head.
When I was tired of doing origami, I went outside for some fresh air, walked to the tobacco shop, and bought some Short Hopes, lighting one up as soon as I got outside. I was drinking another can of vending machine coffee when it hit me.
Something that was so close to me, I never saw it clearly before.
I must have murmured aloud, because Miyagi looked at me and asked, "What is it?"
"Oh, it's the stupidest thing. But I just realized this. There is something I can truly say I love with all my heart."
"Tell me."
"I love vending machines," I said, scratching my head in embarrassment.
"Oh," she said, clearly nonplussed. "What is it about them that you love?"
"I'm not sure. I don't think I even know. But when I was a kid, I wanted to be a vending machine."
She was absolutely dumbfounded.
"Um, just to be clear, when you say 'vending machine,' you mean like what you just used to buy your coffee from?"
"Yeah. But they also dispense cigarettes, umbrellas, good luck charms, grilled onigiri, udon noodles, ice, ice cream, hamburgers, oden, french fries, corned beef sandwiches, instant ramen, beer, shochu… Vending machines sell everything. Japan is the land of vending machines, because it's so peaceful and orderly here."
"And you love vending machines."
"Exactly. You're free to use them or just look at them. Even when I see one that has nothing inside, I'll make sure to observe it and take in the details."
"Hmm… That's a very unique hobby," Miyagi said in a weak attempt at encouragement, but it really was stupid. Utterly unproductive. A symbol of a stupid life, I could admit.
"But I feel like I might understand it," she said, trying to be helpful.
"What, the wish to be a vending machine?" I laughed.
"No, I won't say I get whatever that's about. But you know—vending machines are always there. As long as you have money, they'll give you something warm to eat or drink. There's something very cut-and-dried, unchanging, eternal about them, I feel."
I found this description to be somewhat moving. "Incredible. You just summed up exactly what I was trying to say."
"Thanks," she said, not particularly happily. "Vending machines are very important things to us monitors. They won't ignore us the way store employees do… Anyway, I get that you love vending machines. But what is it you do, exactly?"
"That leads into another story about something I love. Every time I come to the tobacco shop like this, I think about a plotline from Paul Auster's movie Smoke. The man from the cigar shop stands at the intersection in front of his store every morning and takes a picture of the exact same spot. I like that bit a lot; the way it seemed to challenge the very notion of direct meaning really made an impression on me. So I think I'm going to take a page out of Auggie Wren's book and take pictures that seem meaningless. I'll just get basic shots of vending machines, the kind you can find anywhere. The kind anyone could do."
"I don't know if I can explain it, either," Miyagi said, "but I kind of like that."
And that was the start of my vending machine pilgrimage.
At a used-goods store, I bought a rusty old gelatin silver print camera and strap, as well as ten rolls of film. That was all I needed. I knew digital cameras would be cheaper and easier to manage, but I chose this way because I was prioritizing the feeling of taking pictures: setting and winding the film inside the camera, then riding around on the Cub and stopping when I found a vending machine so I could take a photo.
Whenever I did, I tried my best to capture everything in the vicinity of the machine. My interest was not in the minor differences like selection of drinks or layout. I just wanted to record where the vending machine was and how it inhabited the area.
Once I started looking, I was surprised at how many more machines there were than I thought. I took several dozen photographs just in the area around my apartment building. There were always ones I missed, even on roads I traveled all the time, and the discovery of them made my heart soar. And the same vending machine looked very different in the day and at night. Some machines drew attention to themselves with bright lights that attracted bugs, while others loomed out of the darkness by illuminating only the buttons to conserve electricity.
I was aware that even in a stupid hobby like this one, there were plenty of people who did it more thoroughly and patiently than me, and I would never be able to match their ability and dedication. But I didn't care at all. This was a method that worked for me, no matter what anyone else said about it.
The first place I went at the start of the day was the development lab, and I would spend the thirty minutes' wait getting breakfast. At the end of the day, I would lay out the pictures I'd gotten back in the morning on the table with Miyagi and carefully insert each one into an album. The pictures all shared the feature of a vending machine in the center, but that commonality only made the outer differences more striking. It was like having the same person in the same posture with the same expression in the middle of every picture. The vending machine became the measure by which everything else could be judged.
The owner of the photo lab seemed to take an interest in me, with the way I brought in a roll of film containing nothing but vending machines every morning. He had lots of white hairs, was unhealthily skinny, and walked with quite a hunch for someone who was only forty. When he saw me talking cheerfully with the empty air, he spoke to me.
"So is there someone with you?"
I looked at Miyagi, and she looked at me.
"That's right. She's a girl named Miyagi. Her job is to monitor me," I said. Although she knew there was no point to it, Miyagi bowed and said, "Hello."
I didn't expect him to believe me, but the man simply said, "Ah, interesting" and took me at my word. Sometimes you came across eccentrics like this.
"And would these strange photos of yours be of this girl?" he asked.
"No, actually. They're just pictures of vending machines. She helps me when I go around looking for machines and taking pictures of them."
"And will this do something good for her, then?"
"No, it's just a hobby of mine. Miyagi is only tagging along. It's her job."
He looked totally baffled by this, so he simply said, "Well, good luck with it."
We left the store, and as Miyagi stood next to the Cub, ready to sit on the rear seat, I snapped a photo of her.
"What are you doing?" she wondered.
"Well, after what the guy just said, I thought I'd take one of you."
"Other people are only going to see it as a meaningless picture of a motorcycle."
"Nobody is ever going to think any of my photos are anything but meaningless," I retorted.
Of course, people like the photo developer were in the minority—for good reason, probably. One morning, I was heading out of the apartment building toward the trash collection area and was holding the door open while Miyagi put her shoes on, when the resident of the next room over came down the stairs. He was very tall and had a menacing stare. When Miyagi came out and said, "Thanks for waiting," I closed the door and said, "Okay, let's go." The man looked very displeased with me.
It was a clear, hot day with little breeze. I wandered into an area I'd never seen or even heard of, where I milled around for two hours until I finally emerged in a place I recognized, and it was once again the area where Himeno and I spent our childhood. Maybe I had a subconscious tendency to head in that direction when I got lost. Like an animal's homing instinct.
But of course, this place, too, had vending machines. I puttered around the rural roads on the Cub, taking pictures.
There was a retro ice cream machine near a candy store I visited a lot as a boy. I remember enjoying chocolate wheat puffs, candy sticks coated in roasted soybean flour, dice-sized caramels, orange chewing gum, and classic bontan candies. Basically, I loved anything sweet when I was young.
The shop had closed quite a while ago, it seemed, but the broken and rusted machine that had been there for years was still present. A public phone across the street that looked more like a public toilet had been there just as long, but it was still working, at least.
On a bench in the shade of a park stuffed with weeds, Miyagi and I ate the onigiri we packed that morning. There were no people in the park, but there was a black cat and a brown tabby. The animals watched us from a distance, but once they determined we meant them no harm, they began to creep closer. I wished I had some food for them, but we had nothing a cat might like to eat.
"By the way, can cats see you?" I asked Miyagi.
She stood up and walked toward them. The black one ran away, while the tabby retreated a few steps to maintain distance.
"As you can tell, cats and dogs are aware of me," she said, turning back to me. "Not that it means they like me any more."
I smoked a cigarette after the meal, and Miyagi drew something in her notebook with her pencil. She was looking at the cats. They had moved to the top of the slide at some point, and she clearly enjoyed the image.
I was surprised she had this hobby. Maybe this whole time that it looked as if she was keeping an observation record, she'd simply been indulging in a habit of sketching.
"I didn't know you were interested in that," I said.
"It's surprising, isn't it?"
"Sure. But you're not that good at it."
"That's why I'm practicing. Very laudable of me, isn't it?" she said, smug for some reason.
"Will you show me what you've drawn before?"
"…Let's go on to the next one," she said, pointedly ignoring my question and returning her notebook to her bag.
Over the course of half a day, I searched through my hometown neighborhood, and I was heading toward the next area over when I stopped by the old candy shop again.
I saw someone sitting on the bench bearing the milk ad out in front of the building.
And I knew that person well.
I pulled the Cub over to the side of the street and stopped the engine, then approached the elderly woman and called out, "Hello."
Her reaction was slow. But she did hear me, because her eyes flitted in my direction. She had to be over ninety years old. Thousands of wrinkles covered her face and the hands folded on her lap. Her pure-white hair hung limply over her face, which only made her look more like a crestfallen girl in distress.
I crouched in front of the bench and said "Hello" again. "You probably don't remember me anymore, do you?"
I took her silence to be an affirmation.
"I don't blame you. It was over ten years ago when I last visited this place."
She still didn't reply. The old woman's gaze was fixed on the ground a few yards ahead of her. I continued, undaunted.
"But I remember you quite well, actually. Not because I have an especially good memory, being young. I'm only twenty, it's true, but I've forgotten all kinds of things from the past. No matter how happy or unhappy the events were, if I don't have a reason to recall them, they just slip out of my mind over time. I think people fail to notice things like this because you forget that you've forgotten. If people could actually retain their greatest memories of the past in vivid detail, we'd all look more miserable living in the empty present. And if we kept the worst memories of the past in vivid detail, we'd look even more miserable living in the empty present. Everyone just says they remember these things, because it's better to pretend that you do."
She said not a word in agreement or disagreement. The old woman just sat there, as still as a scarecrow.
"The reason you exist so vividly in my uncertain memory is because you once showed favor to me. That was a very rare thing for me. In fact, ten years ago, I hardly ever thanked anyone for anything. If adults were nice to me, I just thought they had to do it and weren't acting out of true generosity… I was a little brat, yes. I suppose that's why I thought about running away. When I was eight or nine, I don't remember the exact time, I had a fight with my mother in the middle of the night and ran away from home. I don't even remember what it was about. Probably something stupid, though."
I sat next to the old woman, leaned back against the bench, and looked at the distant towers of steel and plastic, and the cumulonimbus clouds against the blue sky.
"Since I left without thinking it over first, I just killed time at the candy store. It was at night, when kids shouldn't be walking around, so you asked me, 'Don't you need to go home?' Because of the big fight with my parents, I cried when I answered. When you heard my voice, you opened the door behind the register, beckoned me inside, and gave me some sweets. A few hours later, my parents called you and asked, 'Is our son over there?' You told them, 'He is, but I'm going to pretend he isn't for the next hour' and hung up… Maybe that meant nothing to you. But I think the fact that I still hope in my core for good things from other people is solely a result of that interaction. That's my interpretation, at least."
I asked if she would listen to my prattling for a bit longer. The old woman closed her eyes and froze. She almost seemed to be dead at this point.
"If you've forgotten about me, then you've probably forgotten about Himeno, too. She used to come to this store with me all the time… Himeno was just like a princess in a fairy tale—just like her name would suggest. If you'll forgive me saying this, she was too pretty for a town like this. The two of us were outcasts at the elementary school. They hated me because I was just a stuck-up jerk, but I think they hated Himeno because she was too different and out of place. Though I hate to say it, I have to be thankful for that. We were driven out of any groups we might have belonged to, so Himeno and I were basically two of a kind. I didn't care if any of the other kids picked on me as long as I was around Himeno. I didn't mind, because it was like I was getting the same treatment as her. As if we were the same."
With each utterance of the name Himeno, I got the impression the woman was giving the tiniest reaction.
Pleased, I continued, "In the summer of fourth grade, Himeno moved away because her father was being transferred to a different office. After that, she was steadily deified in my memory. I repeated what she once said—'If we don't find anyone else by the time we're twenty, let's be together'—and that kept me going for the last ten years. But as I learned the other day, not only did Himeno not like me, after a certain point in time she hated me enough to want me to die. She even plotted to kill herself right before my eyes. I've been thinking about what must have gone wrong…and then I had a sudden thought. Before I met her again, I dug up our class's time capsule that included letters from all the students. I shouldn't have done that, of course, but for certain reasons I can't reveal, I'm going to be dying soon, and I figured I could get away with it due to the circumstances."
Now.
Time to check the answer.
"As for the time capsule, strangely enough, Himeno's letter wasn't inside. I interpreted that to mean Himeno wasn't at school that day, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that can't be true. Our teacher took a lot of time to make the students prepare those letters. She wouldn't have buried the time capsule without someone's letter just because they happened to be absent from school on one specific day. The only answer I can think of is that someone else dug up the time capsule first and removed Himeno's letter from it. And aside from Himeno herself, there's no one else I can imagine doing it."
I didn't have the entire image in my mind before I spoke. It was all just coming out.
But by now, it had all formed a straight line connecting the dots.
"When I was seventeen, Himeno sent me a letter. The actual contents weren't that important. As long as it said my name as the recipient and Himeno's name as the sender, that was enough. And she was not the type of person to write letters or call others under any circumstances, even if she liked them. She was even thorough enough to have put a return address on the letter—so I should have realized."
Yes.
I should have known.
"That letter was Himeno's SOS. She was asking me for help. Like me, she was feeling trapped, clinging to the past, so she dug up the time capsule, remembered her one and only childhood friend, and sent a message. I didn't realize what it meant, so I had no right to help her. I lost Himeno, and I deserved to lose her. She became empty, and when I found out, I did, too. Himeno's going to commit suicide soon, and my life will come to an end shortly as well… I know it's an unpleasant place to stop, but that's the end. I'm sorry to have burdened you with such a long and dark tale."
As I stood up to leave, the elderly woman said, "Good-bye" in the faintest voice.
It was the only word she said to me.
"Thank you. Good-bye," I replied, and I left the store.
I wasn't really that hurt that my one-time savior had forgotten me. I was getting used to betrayal from my memories.
At the same time, there was one possibility I'd completely missed.
As I experienced a variety of disappointments, there was one girl who remained at my side, a quiet source of emotional support.
A girl with no future, who held the same despair as I did and chose to sell her time rather than her life.
A very, very kindhearted girl who wasn't that personable but was thoughtful and compassionate in her own unique way.
And I never considered that Miyagi herself might betray me, too.
"Mr. Kusunoki? Mr. Kusunoki?"
Miyagi had learned to stop hesitating every time she put her arms around my torso when riding tandem. She tapped my side as we were driving. I slowed down and asked, "What is it?" Out of some desire to cheer me up, I assumed, she replied, "Let me tell you a nice little secret."
"I just remembered," she said. "I've been on this road before, long ago. Way before I became a monitor… If you keep following this road for a while, then turn right somewhere and continue straight, you'll reach the starry lake."
"Starry lake?"
"The one I wanted to visit again before I die. I don't know the actual name of it."
"Oh, right, you did mention that before."
"Didn't I tell you? A nice little secret?"
"You're right. It is," I said cheerfully. "Let's go there, then."
"Do you have enough gas?"
"I'll fill up along the way."
I topped off the tank at the nearest self-service station, then followed Miyagi's directions. It was already after eight o'clock in the evening. We went up a long mountain road, pausing for a few minutes to give the engine a break at every pullout, and after an hour and a half, we arrived at her starry lake.
After stopping at a nearby convenience store for instant cup noodles and eating them on the bench outside, I parked the Cub at the lot farther ahead, then walked a path with almost no light. Miyagi looked around at the nearby buildings with great nostalgia and often warned me to keep my head down. Out of the corner of my vision, I thought I sensed an incredible panorama of stars above, but I did as Miyagi said.
"Now, listen closely to what I tell you next," she said. "I'm going to take the lead, so I want you to keep your eyes shut until I say it's okay."
"So you don't want me to see until the moment is exactly right?"
"Yes. We came out here for the stars, so you might as well see them in the best possible conditions, right? Now…close your eyes."
I did as she told me, and Miyagi took my hand and said, "This way," leading carefully. Walking with my eyes closed brought to the surface all kinds of noises I didn't hear before. The midsummer insects that initially had all blended together into one cacophony now became four distinct melodies. Bugs that buzzed low and deep, bugs that rubbed and squealed at high pitch, bugs with distinct calls like birds, and bugs that chirped unpleasantly like frogs. I could even hear the difference between the faint sound of the wind, the distant waves, and our footsteps.
"So, Mr. Kusunoki, if I was fooling you and led you somewhere completely different, what would you do?"
"What kind of a place?"
"Good question… Maybe somewhere high up and dangerous, like a cliff or a bridge."
"I never considered that, and I don't intend to start."
"Why?"
"Because I can't see any reason you would do something like that."
"Oh," said Miyagi, sounding disappointed.
The sensation under my feet changed from hard asphalt to sand, then abruptly to wood. We were probably on the pier. "Now stop and keep your eyes shut," Miyagi said, and she let go of my hand. "Watch your step and lie down on your back. When you're facing straight up, then you can look."
I crouched down, carefully laid my back against the ground, took a breath, and opened my eyes.
What I saw before me was not the starry sky I knew.
No, that's not the right way to put it. This night was when I first truly learned what a starry sky was.
I'd seen views like this in books and TV shows. There was the Summer Triangle, with a heavenly river of lights flowing through it. I understood as a general fact that it was possible to see stars as thick as paint spatter from a brush on the dark canvas of the sky.
Those media can describe colors and shapes, but no matter how accurate the information might be, it is simply impossible to imagine the sheer size of it.
The starry night I saw was so, so much more immense than anything I had envisioned. It was like shining snow ready to fall over me.
"I think I understand why you said you wanted to see this one more time before you die," I said to Miyagi, who was standing nearby.
"Right?" she said with great satisfaction, looking down at me.
For a very long time after that, we lay on the pier side by side, gazing at the stars. I saw three shooting stars. I thought about what I'd wish for the next time I saw one. I didn't want my life span back. I didn't want to see Himeno, and I didn't want to rewind time to do it over again. I didn't have the willpower left to do that.
No, I'd probably wish to pass away in peace, as though falling to sleep. To ask for anything else would be presumptuous.
I didn't even need to wonder what Miyagi would wish for. Her wish was to quit the monitoring job so that she wasn't invisible anymore. She was ignored by every human being except for her subject, who was guaranteed to die within a year. Miyagi might be a patient person, but thirty years of that life would break her.
"Miyagi," I said, "you lied to me for my own sake, didn't you? By saying that Himeno hardly remembered me at all."
She turned her head to look at me, back against the pier, and instead of answering the question, she said, "I had a childhood friend, too."
I consulted my memory. "Is that the person you said was important to you?"
"Yes. I'm impressed you remember."
I nodded and waited for her to explain.
Eventually, Miyagi said, "I knew someone who meant to me what Himeno did to you. We were both people who didn't fit in. So we stuck together and made our own little codependent world. On my very first day off after I became a monitor, I went to check on him. I thought, 'I bet he's really beside himself that I'm not around anymore.' I assumed he would have shut himself inside his shell, waiting for me to return… But when I saw him for the first time in a few weeks, he had completely acclimated to life without me. In fact, in less than a month since I vanished, he had seamlessly blended into the normal world, living the same way all the people who shunned us for being different did."
She gazed back up at the sky, a mirthless smile stretched across her face.
"And I realized that to him, I was nothing more than a shackle… To be honest, I think I wanted him to be unhappy. I wanted him to mourn, to despair, to hide in his shell, waiting for my return that would never come and just barely breathing enough to stay alive. I didn't want to know that he had the strength to survive on his own… I haven't once gone to see him since. Whether he seems happy or unhappy—the knowledge would only make me sad."
"But you still want to see him before you die, right?"
"Yes. I don't really care about anything else. That's the only thing I have to cling to at the very, very end." Miyagi sat up and did her usual knee-hugging pose. "So I understand very well how you feel. Though maybe you don't actually want anyone to."
"That's not true," I said promptly. "I'm glad you do. Thanks."
"You're welcome," she said, smiling shyly.
I got the vending machines around the lake on camera, and we went back to the apartment.
Miyagi said she was exhausted from everything today and got into my bed. There was one solitary moment when I tried to sneak a peek back at her but saw she was doing the very same thing. We immediately looked away and faced opposite directions.
I probably should have wished upon a shooting star that these days would continue for as long as possible.
The next time I woke up, Miyagi was gone.
The only thing she left behind was her notebook near the pillow.