I was breathing shallowly. When I got my breathing under control, keeping my head bent, I asked Tohko a question.

"Do you think Kenji Miyazawa is for kids?"

There was no answer.

When I looked over, Tohko was gone. I thought she'd been right beside me.

Confused, I looked back and saw her flipping avidly through a book with her back to me.

"Tohko..."

Nothing.

"Uh..."

Still silence.

Maybe she'd figured out Campanella's secret!

I peeked over her shoulder and saw the t.i.tle printed at the top of the page.

"A Portrait of Shunkin...?"

That wasn't by Kenji Miyazawa; it was by Junichiro Tanizaki, wasn't it?

As I peered at the page even more closely, my face almost touched Tohko's cheek, and she whirled around in surprise.

When she saw me standing so close, she flushed visibly and started chattering quickly, sounding frantic.

"Ack! K-Konoha. I'm sorry. When I saw Tanizaki's complete works, my hand just floated out to it on its own...and once I started reading, I couldn't stop. I didn't forget about you, though! I swear!"

...It looked like she'd gotten lost in another book was all.

"Aw, don't look so annoyed. Tanizaki has the power to draw you in the more you flip through the pages. And Portrait of Shunkin is a masterpiece of short fiction that concentrates Tanizaki's power. It's pale and bewitching and sensual as puffer fish sashimi, and it melts into your tongue.

"Sasuke is a shamisen instructor and is a servant of the beautiful blind woman named Shunkin. He bears for her, his mistress, a love that's closer to reverence. When Shunkin's beautiful face is injured, Sasuke destroys his own eyes in order to carve her beauty into his heart for eternity.

"Your heart trembles at the smoothness of the puffer fish sliding down your throat and the unexpected a.s.sault of rawness, and the core of your brain is jolted by the rich taste of the forbidden. As you lose the ability to think about anything, you feel as if you're simply growing intoxicated on the exquisite flavor.

"See, I didn't abandon you at all, Konoha. I just got a little hit of the puffer fish's poison. Tanizaki is the one to blame."

"You don't need to try so hard with your excuses," I muttered in a whisper, tired. Tohko grabbed onto the sleeve of my coat, and she looked up at me through her eyelashes, tears in her eyes and her cheeks colored ever so slightly.

"But, um, Konoha...When I was reading Tanizaki, it made me superhungry."

The book girl's stomach gurgled.

Thirty minutes later...

In the shade of the copse of trees behind the library, Tohko was joyously munching on a "meal" I had hastily written up in my a.s.signment book.

"Yum! Yummy, Konoha! Two little boys who are best friends are going on an adventure during summer break, right? It's like a piping-hot bagel sandwich piled high with teriyaki chicken and mashed potatoes. The bagel is so chewy and de-lic-ious!"

She tore off little bits from the a.s.signment book and bit into them, chewing them up, kssh-kssh, and swallowing with a grin that filled her entire face.

"I'm sorry it wasn't puffer fish sashimi."

I was drinking hot milk tea in a can I'd bought from a vending machine in the library.

The day was clear, but still-hiding out in a place like this in January, the middle of winter, to eat covertly-I had no clue what we were thinking.

"Mmm, that was goooood. Thank yoooou. Sorry I was the only one who could eat lunch. Aren't you hungry, too?"

And, of course, her face grew apologetic.

"No, I don't want to eat anything."

When I said that, Tohko looked a little sad. Then she immediately said in a ringing voice, "That's no good. You have to eat, or you won't be able to summon any energy when a crisis comes along. Right! In return for the bagel sandwich, your president is treating! C'mon, let's go."

She tugged on my arm with both hands and took me into a nearby fast-food place.

"Heh-heh. Order whateeeever you want."

Not wanting to contradict Tohko, who had her flat-as-a-board chest thrown out, I ordered a fish fillet meal.

Tohko ordered a banana m.u.f.fin and tea, too.

"Am I eating that, too?" I asked after we sat down near the window. She shook her head no and smiled slightly.

"Even if I eat it, it won't taste like anything, but...sometimes I like going out like this and eating a meal with someone."

Her words pierced my heart.

Tohko, who survived by eating stories written down on paper, wouldn't taste anything even if she ate our food. So she would eat books in secret by herself for lunch.

From the outside, she looked extremely happy when she rapturously swallowed the torn-up paper.

"Yum," Tohko murmured as she bit into the banana m.u.f.fin.

"...You don't know what it tastes like."

"No. But...I can imagine it."

She took another bite and smiled brightly.

"I bet this tastes like...Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter."

I ate my fish fillet in silence.

Tohko ate her m.u.f.fin with relish, too.

"...Hey, Konoha. About what you said in the library. I don't think children's literature is just for little kids."

Hadn't she been sucked into the world of Tanizaki? So she had heard me to some extent.

"There's a different flavor to children's literature you read after you grow up than there was reading it as a child. Things that were sweet as a child become bitter once you grow up.

"In particular, Miyazawa's poems and children's stories have a lot of parts that are hard to understand if you only read them once, and you can interpret them a lot of different ways. Maybe adults can actually enjoy it more."

Hearing her say that things that were sweet as a child could feel bitter when you grew up, I had a sense that a cold hand was stroking the back of my neck.

Miu's cold gaze came to mind once again.

After I revealed that I was Miu Inoue, Miu had looked at me with that same piercing gaze.

No-maybe before that...

Hadn't there been a time when Miu had looked at me with poison in her eyes?

Yes, and long before that...

As soon as I thought about that, it became difficult to breathe again.

I got out the day planner that Tohko had been ripping up a little while ago and drew a picture of a broad-chested bird on it. The face was a cat, and I stuck either a beak or horns on its head and a long tongue lolling out. It was the picture that had been on that unsigned New Year's card.

"Tohko, do you recognize this?"

When I put the day planner out on the table, Tohko peered at it closely.

"It was mixed in with the New Year's cards that came to my house. There wasn't a name on it, but I think maybe Miu sent it."

"It might be one of Kenji Miyazawa's doodles," Tohko murmured, frowning. "A lot of the time, Miyazawa would doodle in the margins of his paper. He would draw waddling cats, rocks, trees...stuff like that. This looks like a picture he drew in a corner of the ma.n.u.script for 'Song of the Defeated Youth.'"

"What kind of poem is that?"

"A poem telling about dawn witnessed at the sh.o.r.e. It's based on the poem 'Envy of Daybreak,' which he wrote when he was traveling in the town of Sanriku, and it's included in the second volume of Spring and Asura. He revised it a bunch of times, and from the colloquial 'Envy of Daybreak,' it became the literary 'Song of the Defeated Youth.' This poem is included in an unfinished ma.n.u.script of cla.s.sical poetry.

"The t.i.tle 'Defeated Youth' makes your heart skip momentarily, but it doesn't talk about fierce despair or pain. Instead, it's a quiet, beautiful poem. He's watching the stars disappear from the sky as it brightens at dawn. You could even say it's a poem about lost love."

"Lost love...?"

Tohko murmured a bit from the beginning: "Light touches the tremulous dawn Taking the form of an immaculate sapphire A wandering star I would fain compare with you Melts into nothing now, what misery."

Why had Kenji Miyazawa given this poem the t.i.tle "Song of the Defeated Youth"?

Was it describing the dawn landscape that a defeated boy saw?

What had defeated him?

Love?

Or something totally different?

And was it only a coincidence that Miyazawa had drawn that picture of a monstrous bird in the corner of the ma.n.u.script?

And if the person who sent the picture was Miu, why had she done it?

"What...does this picture look like?" I asked.

"A bird maybe."

"But isn't the face a lot like a cat?"

"That's true."

"And its tongue is sticking out."

"It...looks like that, true."

I wonder what Miyazawa had been sticking his tongue out at.

Had the defeated boy been Miyazawa himself? And what did Miu feel had defeated her?

"You know, there's a bird at the end of 'Envy of Daybreak.'"

Tohko murmured again.

"...The snow-capped juniper and a thousand headlands break into dawn over the wide blue sea in a gale of leaves...

the stars tremble once more like a tribe of birds devastated."

Like a tribe of birds devastated?

I felt a chill in my heart as the line repeated again and again in my mind.

"In 'Song of the Defeated Youth,' the bird phrase itself has disappeared, but...interpreting Miyazawa's works is really hard. The words are abstract, and there are lots of puzzles, and you can take them to signify just about anything. Though that's part of the charm."

Tohko smiled and drank her tea, which was completely cold by now, as if it was delicious.

I cleaned up my fish fillet burger, corn salad, and oolong tea, too.

"What's next?"

"I'd like to try going to my middle school," I muttered in a hard voice, and Tohko sucked in a small breath.

I didn't attend my middle school graduation.

After Miu jumped, I kept having attacks where I suddenly couldn't breathe and I was carried to the nurse's office several times. Finally I stopped going to school and became a shut-in.