Vol 1 Chapter 1 (1/2)

That was the day when, led on by nothing except an impulse of curiosity,

I took the main avenue on the way home. It wasn’t a shortcut, and I

didn’t plan on pa.s.sing by any particular place there. It was just something

I decided to do on a whim.

This part of the avenue was full of skysc.r.a.pers and tall condos, some old,

more of them new, while others were abandoned husks, all commingled

into one crowded skyline. I’d wager everybody in the city, including me,

was tired of looking at them day in and day out. While walking beside the

buildings, I suddenly saw something fall from a roof to the concrete sidewalk

some distance ahead of me.

It was a person.

In the moment that that person fell, I heard a sickening sound. The wet,

raw sound you a.s.sociate with the kind of things you don’t want happening

anywhere near you. The kind of sound you never really get to hear often.

Judging from the height that the person fell from, it was clear that whoever

he or she was died the instant it hit the pavement.

As I drew closer to the point of impact, I was able to scrutinize what happened

more clearly. All that was left, all that my mind could take in, was the

scarlet trail seeping slowly across the asphalt; the frail, bone-like limbs, and

the long, black hair, which still retained some of its living beauty.

And that dead face.

The scene struck my mind with the image of a flower pressed between

the pages of an old, musty tome.

Perhaps because the corpse, with its neck twisted, looked like a broken

lily to me.

4 • KINOKO NASU

/ 1

It is a night somewhere in the beginning of August, and Mikiya comes

by to visit without any prior notice, as per his MO. Popping open the door,

I see him standing idly in the hallway, facing the entrance like some sort of

servant-in-waiting.

“Evening, s.h.i.+ki. You look as lazy as ever,” he says, with a smile on his

face. A strange greeting is just the kind of thing I expected him to do.

“Have you heard?” he continues. “There was another jumper today,

actually. This time I was actually at the scene. There’ve been a lot of these

incidents lately, but I never thought I would actually come across one.”

He hands me a plastic convenience store bag. “Here, in the fridge.” He

holds the bag, arm outstretched, while untying his shoes and talking to

me. Mikiya is nothing if not a multi-tasker. Inside the bag were two cups of

Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream. I guess he wants me to put them inside

my fridge before they melt. While checking out the contents of the bag,

Mikiya had already undone his laces and stepped inside.

My home is just a small apartment in a low-rise. The first thing you see

on opening the front door is the small entryway, not even one meter long,

where you take off your shoes. After going through that mess, you arrive at

my one-stop bedroom-slash-living room, where Mikiya had already started

making himself comfortable. I follow him in, glaring at his back while doing

so.

“s.h.i.+ki, you’ve been skipping cla.s.s again, haven’t you? Your grades don’t

really matter, but come on; you should at least attend your cla.s.ses. Don’t

tell me you already forgot our promise to go to college together.”

“Wiser words were never before spoken,” I reply, feeling particularly

caustic, “especially coming from someone who dropped college way before

I did. And sadly, this promise we supposedly made ain’t ringing any bells.”

“Don’t start being difficult again, s.h.i.+ki.”

Mikiya tends to be a bit more blunt when you’ve got him cornered in

a conversation; a helpful tidbit that has only recently come back to me. I

climb on top of the bed and lie flat, Mikiya choosing to sit on the floor while

leaning on the bed, his back facing me.

This young man named Mikiya Kokutō has been a friend to me since

high school. At least that’s what my head tells me. My recollections have

been a bit fuzzy lately.

We live in an age where fas.h.i.+on trends and the accompanying models

that people want to look like are as apt to change as often as you blink in a

/ 1 • 5

day. A rarity, then, to still find someone like Mikiya, who steadfastly refuses

to budge from his student-like appearance. He doesn’t dye his hair or have

it grow into an unmanageable mess, he doesn’t tan his skin or wear accessories,

he doesn’t carry a cellphone, and he doesn’t even allow himself the

simple pleasures of flirting around with women. His demeanor struck me

as the kind of person you’d probably see more ordinarily at lazy English

train stations. His 170cm height, considerate disposition, and large, black

rimmed gla.s.ses certainly complete the image. Not exactly someone you

do a double-take on when you pa.s.s him by on the street, though it mostly

due to his own fault: if he actually took the time to dress nicely instead of

wearing somber black clothes every day, he might even be noticed.

“s.h.i.+ki, are you listening? I met your mom today, too. She said you

haven’t really contacted your family since you got out of the hospital two

months ago. You should at least show your face at the Ryōgi estate, don’t

you think?”

“Mmm?” I reply, as listlessly as Kokutō said I was. “I don’t really have any

business being there, though.”

“Oh, come on, isn’t it about time you patched things up with your folks?

It’s been two years after all, and you haven’t talked or met with them since.”

“There’s no use in making a pointless house call or a pointless conversation

with them when it’ll only make us grow farther apart. It still isn’t real

to me. Not so soon after getting out of the hospital. I mean, talking to you

is still weird; what’ll happen if I talk to those strangers?” My patience with

the subject grew thinner every second. I wish he would just stop pus.h.i.+ng it.

“Things aren’t going to get any better if it keeps up like this, you know. It

isn’t right for you and your parents to be living so close to each other and

not even talk.”

The sudden criticism makes me frown. What exactly is wrong with it?

There’s nothing illegal going on between me and my parents. It’s just that

I lost some of my memories in a traffic accident. We’re recognized as a

family by the law and by our blood, so there really shouldn’t be anything

to talk about here.

Mikiya always has his head in a worry about any d.a.m.n person and their

life issues, even though to me it seems like a wasteful exercise.

6 • KINOKO NASU

Panorama - I

s.h.i.+ki Ryōgi is my friend from high school. We studied together in a private

school famous for putting a lot of its students on the fast track to a

college education. On the day that I was looking for my name on the lists of

people who had pa.s.sed the entrance exam, I saw a name that caught my

eye: “s.h.i.+ki Ryōgi.” As names go, it was a pretty peculiar one, and our being

cla.s.smates ensured that it would get stuck in my head. Ever since then, I’ve

become possibly the only friend s.h.i.+ki’s ever had.

Due to our school having no uniforms, and a casual clothing policy, a lot

of people dressed in a mult.i.tude of ways to express themselves. Even in

that sort of environment, s.h.i.+ki stood out from the crowd.

Largely because of the kimono.

At first, that particular wardrobe choice made it seem as if the prime

minister himself walked in on the cla.s.sroom, forcing everyone to silence.

But once it became clear that s.h.i.+ki wasn’t sparing any words for anyone

except the queries of the teachers, which were uncommon, people started

to stop caring. Not that s.h.i.+ki minded.

The cultivated air of inapproachability, intentional or not, certainly widened

the distance more than the clothes already did, but s.h.i.+ki’s features

undoubtedly helped out in that regard as well.

Black hair framed s.h.i.+ki’s face, as it does now; cut long enough to hide

the ears. However, it was clear that the maintenance of it seemed to s.h.i.+ki

like it was time wasted, evidenced by how it looked like it was cut with

reckless abandon. Yet the cut was just at that height where people start to

second guess s.h.i.+ki’s gender on first contact. More than anything though,

it would be s.h.i.+ki’s eyes that lend your feet to stop. Those eyes carried a

piercing gaze, seeming to bear witness to something invisible, something

“other”. To me, those eyes were a definition, synecdochic to character.

But then, the accident happened…

/ 2 • 7

/ 2

“The jumpers.”

“Wha—oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening.” Mikiya c.o.c.ks his head towards me

a bit to listen.

“I said ‘the jumpers.’ As in the people who took a header on the sidewalk

off a building. Would you say that what happened was accidental, Mikiya?”

He shuts up for a moment and actually tries to think on the casual question

seriously. He puts a hand on his chin, evoking the puzzled intensity of

stumped detectives the world over.

“Well, it’s on the person who jumps if he really wanted to do that or not.

As for how society will look at it, they do cla.s.sify ‘falling from a high place’

as an accident so—”

“Not a murder, not exactly a suicide, and not exactly an accident either.

That’s vague,” I muse. “I don’t know if it occurred to them that killing themselves

would just inconvenience a lot more people than they thought it

would. Maybe they should have grabbed a handbook on the subject and

died a bit better.” As soon as I say that, I see Mikiya shake his head in disapproval.

“I guess I have to add ‘speaks ill of the departed’ to your already ill.u.s.trious

résumé of insensitivity.” He replies in monotone disappointment,

almost without a note of chastis.e.m.e.nt. Typical.

“Ah, Kokutō. Ever the killjoy.” Despite my objection, he doesn’t even

seem to care.

“Hah, that’s rare. It’s been a while since you called me by that name.”

“That so?”

He nods like a squirrel. I tend to p.r.o.nounce his surname a bit differently

than you would normally, with a sort of French flavor; a small joke that

originates way back in high school. I don’t really like the ring of the nickname

though, so I stick with “Mikiya” for the most part, but sometimes I

just blurt it out, like an involunatry emission of boredom or frustration. In

the silence of my reverie, he suddenly claps his hands as if remembering

something.

“Oh yeah, while we’re on the topic of rare things, I just remembered

that my sister Azaka said she saw it too.”