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 passing by any particular place there It was just so
I decided to do on a whim
This part of the avenue was full of skyscrapers and tall condos, some old,
more of theled
into one crowded skyline I’d wager everybody in the city, including me,
was tired of looking at the beside the
buildings, I suddenly saw so fall from a roof to the concrete sidewalk
some distance ahead of me
It was a person
In thesound The wet,
raw sound you associate 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 froht 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 so beauty
And that dead face
The scene struck e 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 soust, and Mikiya comes
by to visit without any prior notice, as per his MO Popping open the door,
I see hi the entrance like some sort of
servant-in-waiting
“Evening, shi+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 e” He
holds the bag, ar to
were two cups of
Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice creauess he wants me to put them inside
out the contents of the bag,
Mikiya had already undone his laces and stepped inside
My ho you see
on opening the front door is the s,
where you take off your shoes After going through that mess, you arrive at
room, where Mikiya had already started
at his back while doing
so
“shi+ki, you’ve been skipping class again, haven’t you? Your grades don’t
really matter, but come on; you should at least attend your classes Don’t
tell ether”
“Wiser words were never before spoken,” I reply, feeling particularly
caustic, “especially coe way before
I did And sadly, this pro any bells”
“Don’t start being difficult again, shi+ki”
Mikiya tends to be a bit ot him cornered in
a conversation; a helpful tidbit that has only recently come back to me I
cli 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 fashi+on trends and the acco 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 uneable mess, he doesn’t tan his skin or wear accessories,
he doesn’t carry a cellphone, and he doesn’t even allow himself the
si around omen His demeanor struck me
as the kind of person you’d probably see lish
train stations His 170ce, black
rie Not exactly someone you
do a double-take on when you pass hih it mostly
due to his own fault: if he actually took the time to dress nicely instead of
wearing soht even be noticed
“shi+ki, are you listening? I met your mom today, too She said you
haven’t really contacted your faot out of the hospital two
i 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, cos 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 ina pointless house call or a pointless conversation
with therow farther apart It still isn’t real
toout of the hospital Ito 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 pushi+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 criticis with it?
There’s nothing illegal going on between me and my parents It’s just that
I lost sonized 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 damn person and their
life issues, even though to me it seems like a wasteful exercise
6 • KINOKO NASU
Panorama - I
shi+ki Ryōgi is ether in a private
school fa 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 passed the entrance exaht my
eye: “shi+ki Ryōgi” As na
classet stuck in my head Ever since then, I’ve
become possibly the only friend shi+ki’s ever had
Due to our school having no unifor policy, a lot
of people dressed in a multitude of ways to express themselves Even in
that sort of environment, shi+ki stood out from the crowd
Largely because of the kimono
At first, that particular wardrobe choice made it seem as if the prime
everyone to silence
But once it beca any words for anyone
except the queries of the teachers, which were uncommon, people started
to stop caring Not that shi+ki minded
The cultivated air of inapproachability, intentional or not, certainly widened
the distance more than the clothes already did, but shi+ki’s features
undoubtedly helped out in that regard as well
Black hair frah to hide
the ears However, it was clear that the maintenance of it seemed to shi+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 shi+ki’s gender on first contact More than anything though,
it would be shi+ki’s eyes that lend your feet to stop Those eyes carried a
piercing gaze, see
“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 cocks 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 classify ‘falling froh place’
as an accident so—”
“Not a murder, not exactly a suicide, and not exactly an accident either
That’s vague,” Ithemselves
would just inconvenience a lot ht 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 illustrious
résumé of insensitivity” He replies in monotone disappointment,
almost without a note of chastisement 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 pronounce 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
so
“Oh yeah, while we’re on the topic of rare things, I just remembered
that my sister Azaka said she saw it too”