"I like your face, Konoha. Because it's exactly like Shuji's." I remembered her telling me that.

That wasn't all.

I was one of the very few people who knew the true Takeda. I was probably special in that way, too, beyond the whole dimension of love and hate.

"When she saw Miu lashin' out about how 'Konoha is my dog,' Chee's eyes went wide, and ever since then she's been as blank as ice. She was repelled. I was glad I brought her," he told us euphorically, his eyes flashing pa.s.sionately. Ryuto's psychology was beyond the grasp of my understanding.

Tohko interrupted Ryuto with a harsh expression. "We can imagine what happened after that from the notes. Since the time line is all scrambled up, it's confusing, but...Chia went to see Miu on her own and offered her help. She thereby began to relate overtly to Miu's revenge. Right, Miu?"

Miu muttered bitterly, "She...told me, 'This is an experiment.' She was the one who thought up the plan to use Kotobuki to draw Konoha to the hospital."

There was a hitch in Kotobuki's throat, as if she was choking back a shout.

She was probably incredulous that the innocent freshman who had always greeted her so cheerfully had suggested laying a trap for her.

I didn't understand what Takeda's goal could have been, either.

Professor Bulcanillo was Takeda. But what had Takeda hoped to do by cornering Miu and me? What did she mean by "experiment"?

"Why would Takeda do something like that?"

My throat was like sandpaper, and my voice came out hoa.r.s.e.

Takeda was as silent as a doll and didn't answer. Her eyes just wandered in s.p.a.ce.

"She wanted to know if she could get hurt, actually."

Ryuto was the one who'd spoken, his expression so calm it looked arrogant.

"Whether by seein' 'someone special' to her get hurt, she would be able to feel their pain and suffering. Whether she had become a complete human being. Or whether she was still an unfeeling monster. She wanted to know more than anything, and it started to seem like she was losin' her mind."

Strong, cool eyes fixed on me.

"So she did an experiment."

I felt a shudder run down my spine. And-and that experiment had been?

Ryuto told us in an even more detached voice.

"But even seein' you suffer, stuck between Miu and Kotobuki, her emotions only got colder, and she couldn't feel a thing. Chee must have been panicked, like she couldn't go on this way. And then she called Miu's mom and sent a copy of the novel to you and tried to hurt you more and more. In order to hurt herself."

"Do I really...seem normal?"

I recalled Takeda looking up at me with fragile eyes that wavered with anxiety, and I shuddered to the core of my body.

Takeda had been suffering then, too!

Akutagawa frowned and murmured, "What a stupid thing to do."

Miu whirled on him instantly with incredible force.

"T-to you! It might seem like it's stupid! Someone like you who's composed and only says the right thing wouldn't get it! It's because he was so incredibly important to her, because she was so incredibly nervous, that she wanted to break him! Because she couldn't face the fear that he would break someday and she would lose him!!" Miu screamed, as if spitting out her raging emotions.

Akutagawa was painfully silent.

"...Ngh...it's like being abandoned in total darkness. You're so nervous, so nervous your stomach feels like it's gonna twist into knots-so then how much more you want to destroy everything before it breaks!

"And even so-even when she'd shattered everything beyond recognition, she wanted to know for certain if there was anything left, if she could be loved for who she really is!"

Miu's shriek of sorrow echoed through the darkness.

How did we keep getting so lost in a midnight world? Why did we continue lamenting as we wounded our hearts and were cut apart?

Miu and me and Takeda.

By the time my throat had squeezed tight and breathing had become difficult under the sadness crashing like a wave, Tohko whispered in a voice tinged with melancholy, "You're right. It's very unsettling to be unable to see the path you should be on...and so is not understanding how someone important to you feels."

Miu looked at Tohko as if she'd been slapped by her clear voice.

Tohko's eyes were filled with such deep, quiet sadness and sympathy that they seemed to suck us in. I wondered if Tohko had ever gotten lost in the darkness.

Her pure, melancholy voice threaded together her thoughts.

"Giovanni felt sad about Campanella, too.

"Since Night of the Milky Way Railroad is written from Giovanni's perspective, Campanella's feelings aren't described clearly. Giovanni doesn't know what Campanella is thinking. So the reader becomes sad, just like Giovanni.

"But even though he never said so, Campanella was worried about Giovanni the whole time. Even when the other children teased Giovanni or said mean things about him, Campanella was the only one who never tormented him, right? He would watch Giovanni with sadness, right? And I think that Campanella wanted to talk to Giovanni more than anything."

Her voice catching, Miu shouted, "That's not true! Campanella was an arrogant bully, and he even made friends with girls on the train. He had no idea how much it hurt Giovanni to see that!"

Ah...I get it.

I'd thought I was Giovanni and Miu was Campanella all this time.

But at some point I had turned into Campanella in Miu's mind.

Just as my chest had tightened in adoring Miu and not understanding her, Miu too had felt that she was Giovanni, the one who'd been abandoned.

What was it Campanella wished for? That question was posed by Miu herself, who had once been Campanella. At the same time, it was a sorrowful appeal to me, who had become Campanella.

To say, "I don't understand how you feel. Show me your true thoughts-"

Maybe everyone was Giovanni and Campanella to somebody. Jealous and uneasy at not understanding a friend's feelings and becoming sad.

Miu was getting annoyed, but Tohko spoke kindly to her.

"You really think Campanella didn't understand anything? If so, you need to read Night of the Milky Way Railroad again. And think about Campanella's feelings this time.

"Campanella is described as a strong, athletic, ideal young man, but was he really like that? Couldn't he have been an ordinary boy with weaknesses, just like Giovanni? Even if he wanted to be friends with Giovanni like he used to be, maybe he was afraid of Zanelli and his friends and couldn't do it. He might have regretted that.

"So before their last journey, I think he wanted to spend time with his most beloved friend. Maybe he wanted to tell him something he'd been unable to say until then.

"Really, try reading Night of the Milky Way Railroad again from a different perspective. The same way Hatori's story lay behind Itsuki's, Campanella's story lies behind Giovanni's."

Miu shook her head fiercely. She desperately blinked away the tears welling into her eyes to hold them back, and with reddened eyes, she yelled, "But in the end, Campanella left Giovanni and went far away all on his own!! Giovanni was left behind and turned into a pudgy bird that couldn't fly, and all he could do was watch through tears as the stars disappeared and dawn broke!"

The tears welling out of her dropped onto her skirt.

Tohko's face fell, and grief came into her eyes, too.

I knew how Night of the Milky Way Railroad ended.

"Let's go together, Campanella."

Giovanni turned around, and Campanella was no longer there.

Giovanni leaned out of the train window and screamed, beating his chest and sobbing full throatedly.

Then, waking up in the middle of the gra.s.s on a hill, Giovanni learns that when Campanella had gone out to launch candlelit gourds onto the river, he had drowned saving their cla.s.smate Zanelli.

How Giovanni must have felt as he gazed at the sky that day.

The twinkling stars disappeared one by one, the world grew blindingly bright, and as he watched Campanella's figure grow ever more distant in the darkness, what was it he thought about?

When the long, painful night that would allow no sleep broke into dawn, the light of morning brought the cruel truth into relief.

When someone is forced to realize that the road he'd been working hard to make progress on was no different from the place he'd started, and when he realized that he had in fact gone backward, all that person can do is face the pale sky and lament.

Tears slid down Miu's soggy cheeks one after another.

"Giovanni can never see Campanella again! Why did Kenji Miyazawa write a story of such suffering? Why did he write such a hopeless story? Couldn't the two of them have journeyed together forever as friends? Why was Giovanni the only one who had to get off the train? Even though they promised that they would always, always be together, on and on forever!! It's a lie to say Kenji Miyazawa's story is nice! It's a lie to say there are dreams! There's no separation this cruel! There's no disappointment this cruel! I can't stand Kenji Miyazawa!"

Her eyes full of tears, Tohko murmured, "That's true...Night of the Milky Way Railroad is a very sad story.

"Even in the real world, Miyazawa lost someone important to him. In the winter of his twenty-sixth year, his little sister Toshi, whom he'd loved so much, got sick and died. He writes about the shock and pain of that in the poems 'Morning of My Last Farewell,' 'Pine Needles,' and 'Voiceless Grief.' Your heart feels crushed under the amazing poetry that seems to be screaming out silently, their souls bleeding...

"And having lost his one and only traveling companion who shared his beliefs, two years later he wrote the first draft of Night of the Milky Way Railroad."

Tohko started sincerely expounding to Miu, who was still crying, fervently, as if she was speaking about someone close to her.

"Lots of sad things happened to Miyazawa after that, too.

"Actually, Miu...Miyazawa was spoken of as a saint who did everything in his power for the farmers of his hometown, but he was actually bad at dealing with people and didn't even get along with his father. He was separated from his beloved little sister and from his best friend, and he wasn't even recognized as an author while he was alive.

"All Miyazawa published in his lifetime was the poetry collection Spring and Asura and the fairy-tale collection Restaurant of Many Orders. Neither one sold at all. Spring and Asura was self-published, and with Restaurant of Many Orders, instead of royalties, he received one hundred copies, and sales were so bad that he took a loan from his father to buy the stock of two hundred. They went mostly unreviewed, too."

Tohko continued talking with tenderness and pathos.

That there had been a person like that. That he had felt the pain and suffering of being alive.

"He started farming and tried growing ritzy stuff like flowering cabbage, tomatoes, tulips, stuff like that, but in the opinion of the people who were bowed down by the deep famine in his farming village, Miyazawa was growing useless hobby items, and they only saw him as a weirdo. Even when he went to sell pulling a two-wheeled cart, most of it went unsold, and he would apparently go home handing it out for free.

"He even sometimes wrote letters to friends saying that his hometown was a dirty village and that the people's feelings were a mystery to him. The actual Miyazawa wasn't a saintly n.o.bleman; he had nothing but a string of failures where things didn't go well, and he never kept at anything for long.

"So then did Miyazawa include the pain or despair he felt or his resentment toward a reality that he could do nothing about in his stories? Are Miyazawa's stories tales of failure and lamentation?"

Miu opened her tearful eyes wide and stared at Tohko.

Tohko looked quietly back into her eyes and murmured, "It's not like that, is it?"

Miu's shoulders were shaking slightly.

Hatori's story, crafted on top of Itsuki's story, had been overflowing with naked hatred and pain.

But Tohko was telling Miu outright, like a slap in the face, that Kenji Miyazawa hadn't been like that, that the stories he wrote weren't stories of dark failure.

"And the famous poem called 'Surrender Not to the Rain' is something he wrote on his sickbed. About a month before that, he had been in such a hopeless state that he'd written his will in preparation for death. And not two years later, Miyazawa had died."

Tohko's eyes and voice were colored by deep kindness and melancholy as she stared at Miu.

Miu bit down on her lip and was trembling. It was as if she had forgotten even to cry.

Tohko recited Miyazawa's poem serenely.

"Surrender not to the rain, Surrender not to the wind, Nor yet to the snow nor heat of summer.

Holding fast the body sound Without greed and Grieving not our wrongs Ever with a quiet smile."

"Shedding tears in time of drought, Walking bewildered in the summers of cold."

"Named by all a good-for-naught, Neither praised Nor concerned."

"Such a figure"

"I wish to be."

The melancholy squeezed my heart powerfully. My throat trembled and burned.

Such a thing was surely impossible. We all surrender easily to the rain and to the wind.

It isn't someone who's winning who prays not to surrender.

The moment you make that wish, you're already losing and racked by anxiety.

But that's precisely why we make the wish.

Writhing in the darkness, shouting.