Chapter Four: I Wish You Heaven

1.

 

“Kamikishiro Naoko is dead. You should forget about her,” was all that was written in the letter. It looked like a computer print out.

“What?” I picked up the envelope and studied it for a moment, but all it had listed on it was my name, “Kimura Akio” and home address. There was no return address at all, and judging from the stamp, it had been posted in the same town where I attended high school.

At first, I thought it must be a prank by one of my old classmates. My little fling with Kamikishiro Naoko had kinda become public knowledge after it ended.

But it seemed a bit late for that. Two full years had passed since I’d last seen her, and this kind of prank seemed a little irrelevant now.

Still, she vanished abruptly during my second year, and I still don’t know why she disappeared. I doubt anybody knows. Had anybody ever really known what had gone on in her head?

 

***

 

Kamikishiro Naoko and I first hooked up in a pretty strange kinda way.

This all took place not too long after the spring term had begun.

I was smoking a Caster Mild around the back of the school one day at lunch, when a boy and a girl showed up. Luckily for me, I was hiding behind a tree, so they didn’t see me.

There was kind of a long, meaningful silence, so I took that opportunity to hide even better, hoping to get an eyeful.

But they barely even looked at each other, they just sort of stood there, fidgeting.

(Ah ha…)

Just as I got it figured out, the girl opened her mouth.

“Did you…read the letter?” she said, clasping her hands.

“Mm,” he said evasively.

The whole thing was kinda old fashioned, and I was just about to lose interest, when the boy suddenly looked around nervously and asked, “You are alone…right?”

“Hunh?” she blinked. And so did I. Most people usually come alone at moments like this. Though, of course, there are always some losers that need their friends to goad them on.

“So you’re not gonna beat me up or anything?” he asked, relieved.

What, was this kid afraid of girls or something?

Then I finally noticed.

His slippers were blue, and hers were yellow. Our school was set up so that each grade had a different color. I was wearing green ones. The boy was a first year, and the girl was third year.

“No, nothing like that!” she exclaimed. The moment that I knew she was my senpai, she started looking extremely grown up…and hot. I’m pretty picky when it comes to girls, but I could tell she had on makeup that subtly made her eyes look bigger. But it was natural makeup, so that the teachers would never notice. It was also obvious that she worked pretty hard at making herself always look cheerful.

But the other one, this first year kid, looked like a child. He was a baby-faced pretty boy, yet kinda ordinary--but hey, some girls are into that.

“Then what is it?” he asked the older girl vacantly.

“You know…” she said, turning red and staring at her feet. Her expression clearly showed that it wasn’t anything but what it was.

(Hunh…?)

I knew how the kid felt, though. He couldn’t figure out why. Why was this pretty senior asking a kid like him out? It was natural to be dubious instead of happy.

Course now I’m in college, I know loads of girls who have boyfriends younger than them. But that just doesn’t happen in high school. Up to high school, you’re in a sort of unmistakable feudal system. A girl could date a college guy or a Junior High kid or anyone she wanted to outside of school--but there was an unwritten rule that a girl could only date boys her year or older on the inside.

“Um…Kamikishiro-san?” he asked, very troubled. This is where I learned her name.

“What?” she replied, looking at him with a mixture of anxiety and expectation. Men find this kind of look hard to say no to.

But he was looking away and didn’t see it.

“I’m sorry! I just can’t do this!” he sort of shrieked as he turned and ran away.

“Ah…!” Kamikishiro almost chased after him, but stopped herself. Her shoulders slumped.

From behind, I could see her head hanging down and a little sideways. Somehow, this angle made her all the more beautiful, like some sort of female Don Quixote, fighting the invisible school rules. Gotta say, it impressed the shit out of me.

While I was off feeling all impressed, she suddenly rolled her head around like an old man getting out of the bath.

“Not again,” she said exhaustedly, and then spun round and looked right at me.

I didn’t have time to hide. Our eyes met.

“Enjoy the show? Ah ha ha!” she laughed, and strolled over to me. She’d known I was there the whole time.

“Uh, n-no. I-I didn’t mean to watch,” I said, scrambling.

She reached out her hand, and said, “My fee,” as she pulled a Caster Mild out of my pocket. “Damn, I’ve been dying for a hit of nicotine all day.”

She stuck the cigarette between her lips and looked at me expectantly. I hurriedly lit it.

“Pretty smooth,” she said with a smirk. She let out a big puff of smoke. Her manner was the polar opposite from a moment before.

But looking at her profile, I could make out the tear tracks.

“You were serious,” I said, expecting her to deny it and move on.

But instead, she just nodded and said, “You bet I was.” She slumped into a crouch and continued, “Serious as I’ve ever been.” She hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in her skirt.

“Why can’t we pick who we fall in love with? It would be so much easier…” she said forlornly.

“Well, yeah, true—but frankly, I think you’re better off getting rejected by a guy like that,” I said in a very honest tone.

She looked up. Her tears had made her eyeliner run a bit. Unexpectedly, she said, “…Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t be nice to me. I don’t want to fall for you, too.”

“What?!” I yelped, completely off balance now. She stood up, no longer crying, and smiled. “Just kidding. But you’re a good guy. So, what’s your name?”

“Kimura, 2-B.”

“I’m Kamikishiro, 3-F. You planning on going to class this afternoon?”

“Not really.” I had Modern Japanese and Political Science left, but I was planning on skipping them.

“Then I’ll buy you a MOS Burger. You know, pay you back for cheering me up. C’mon, I know a way out the back,” she winked naughtily.

And that’s basically how we got started.

That’s pretty much what we were like the whole time. We were never really “in love,” as such. We might have looked like we were from the outside or something, but she never really fell for me. At least, I don’t think she did. That was two years ago.

 

2.

 

Eventually, Kamikishiro did convince that first year kid—his name was Tanaka Shiro—to go out with her. When she attacked, no one could stop her.

One time, I just had to tell her, “I just don’t know what you see in him.” She often called me up and asked me to hang out with her.

Yeah, you could call it a date. We’d watch movies, eat out, shoot pool and bet money on the game. We’d also do other stuff too—but you know how it is.

“Well, you see…he’s an archer.”

“An archer? On the archery team?”

If I remember it correctly, we were on one of those slow moving ferris wheels at an amusement park. It was like a picture postcard of those cheesy high school dates that you see in manga.

“Yeah. First time I saw him, he was still in Junior High and was in some contest. You ever seen one? They all line up and shoot. The first one to miss loses. It was pretty damn cool. He did pretty well, but eventually lost. But his eyes…when he stared at that tiny little target so far away there was this glitter in them. Gave me goosebumps. And then, he’d let the arrow fly…and swoosh!”

“Sounds kinda shallow…” I said, somewhat disgusted. All that had nothing whatsoever to do with Tanaka himself, or with his personality. Of course he’d be reluctant.

“I’d much rather play around with someone like you, Kimu-kun. You’re more fun. And I got no plans to take up archery myself. But I can’t shake the feeling that kid is meant for bigger things.”

“And I’m not, you mean? Ouch,” I grimaced. The words ‘someone like you’ made things crystal clear. Nothing I could do when she put it that way.

“Yep. You’re like me that way. I’m a mess. And, frankly, so are you, Kimu-kun.”

“Can’t deny that,” I said, chuckling. It was true. If it wasn’t, then why would I be dating a girl who I knew full well had another guy on the side? Still, I was falling for her pretty hard by this point. Yet I never even considered trying to get her to break things off with Tanaka. It wasn’t just a mess—it was a freaking train wreck just waiting to happen. And on top of that, she was hardly the only girl I was seeing. Yeah, we were exactly the same.

“I’ll be honest. Shiro-kun doesn’t get me at all,” she said, sighing bitterly. “He tries not to hurt me, but he always talks kinda standoffish, and that just hurts me more. He just doesn’t get that at all.”

“Hunh. Can’t say I do either.”

“I’m just getting in his way. I don’t think he really needs to be in love yet.”

Sometimes, I found her nearly impossible to understand.

It’s easy to do the typical guy thing and just bitch that girls are all complicated and stuff, but her level of complexity was clearly at a notch or two above the other girls her age. I’m pretty sure most of them wouldn’t have been able to follow her, either. As it was, the only friends that I knew she had were me and some girl in her class called Kirima Nagi. That girl was even weirder than Kamikishiro, so I guess that’s why they got along. Truthfully, Kirima was better looking than Kamikishiro, but I always did like Kamikishiro better. Even now.

“But do the two of us need it? I guess so. Feels like I’m kinda incomplete on my own, you know?”

“That’s it exactly! See, we’re the same,” she said, gave me a tiny smile, leaned forward, and put her lips on mine.

It was no big deal. It was not exactly the first time we’d kissed.

“…you do that with Tanaka?” I asked curtly.

“Hell, no,” she grinned, denying it instantly.

She was always at her most attractive when she wasn’t outright trying to be sexy or to act cute. I never figured out why.

 

***

 

I was pretty sure that the letter was a prank, but something about it just kept bugging me. I decided to skip class and head over to the town where I’d gone to high school. Call it a hunch, but whoever had sent the letter probably lived there.

My family still lives there, but I didn’t swing by; I just headed straight for Shinyo Academy. I didn’t think any of the current students were behind it, but my legs took me in that direction anyway.

“Ah! Akio! Over here!” someone called as I waited for the bus to arrive.

I turned around and found a girl who’d been in my same class during my first and third years—Miyashita Touka. The first thing that I noticed was the huge Spalding bag over her shoulder.

“Hey, what’s up?” I replied.

“What’re you doing back here? It’s not even New Year’s yet!” Miyashita is a cute girl, but I’d never made a pass at her—which is probably why we’re still friends.

“Yeah, no reason in particular. You?”

“You didn’t hear? I failed exams. I’m a ronin. On my way to cram school as we speak.”

“Oh, right.”

“Yep. Guess you forgot all about us when you moved up, huh?”

“You sound bitter. Fighting with that designer boyfriend of yours?” I asked, knowing that she’d been dating an older boy in that line of work since her second year.

“Do not even talk to me about him. He never even calls!” she said, pouting.

“He’s probably trying not to disrupt your studies.”

“Nah, he studies more than me. He’s trying to get some sort of award. Makes me sick.”

“Hmmm…”

“What about you? Got a college girl yet?”

I made a face. “Nope.”

“Aw, that third year girl still dragging you back?”

“She was a third year then. She’d be twenty now.”

“You’re… You’re counting her birthdays? She dumped you and vanished! Give up on her already!”

“It’s none of your business,” I spat.

She looked pissed, but she grabbed my hand.

“W-what?”

“Come with me. We are having tea.”

Still pissed, she dragged me into a nearby café by the name of Tristan.

“What about cram school?”

“Screw it. I’m gonna fail again this year anyway,” she said recklessly.

She plunked herself down in a booth and shouted at the counter, “Two American coffees!” She then turned on me to tell me exactly what I already knew, “You’re an idiot.”

“I know,” I replied petulantly.

“No, you don’t! You think you’re some sort of hero, don’t you? What with that mess two years ago,” Miyashita announced. She’d always been like this, sort of self-righteous and inclined to stick her nose into everything.

“I do not. That was just…”

“It wasn’t you, was it? Her lover. You didn’t even know who it was you were taking the fall for, did you?”

“………”

Two years ago, after Kamikishiro had vanished, they found a blanket, pillow and electric heater in a storage room near the gym, where nobody ever went. It was obvious somebody had snuck into the school and had been living there. At first, they thought it was a drifter, but then they found an accessory that had belonged to Kamikishiro (according to one of the girls in her class), and it turned into a student body scandal.

I don’t know what kind of people Kamikishiro’s parents were, but their daughter had disappeared and the school suspected her involvement in illicit activities, yet the parents made no protest at all to the accusations. In her continued absence, the school made preparations to forcibly expel her. At which point, a certain male student announced that he’d been her lover, and all hell broke loose after that.

“She didn’t bring any outsiders into the school. Don’t expel her,” he’d said.

The teachers didn’t even pretend to believe him. But the students made a huge fuss about it and just to calm things down, the school suspended the boy and relented on Kamikishiro’s punishment.

But Kamikishiro never did show up again. Her name was even kicked off the rosters at graduation, due to a lack of credits.

It all amounted to nothing in the end. There was never really anything to the story. As a result of the commotion, the boy got his comeuppance, though. He received a series of Dear John letters from all of his many girlfriends, telling him that he was a loser and that they were dumping his sorry ass.

“…No, I knew who Kamikishiro was seeing,” I told Miyashita with a faint smile.

“Liar.”

“No, really.”

“Then, who? Who’d she drop you for?”

“An alien. He took her with him back into space.”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than a slap echoed through the café. Miyashita had belted me one across the face.

“Get a grip on yourself! Be a man, and just move on!” she said, furious.

Wasn’t like she had any special feelings for me, mind you. She was just that kind of girl.

“S-sorry,” I said, rubbing my cheek sheepishly.

But I hadn’t been joking. That was exactly what Kamikishiro had said to me.

 

3.

 

“Kimu-kun, do you think human existence is justified?” Kamikishiro asked, out of the blue one day.

“Nope,” I said, instantly. I was getting used to her non sequiturs.

“Dang, neither do I,” she sighed.

We were lying next to each other on the bank of the river that ran along the road leading up to school. Since most of the students took the bus, people hardly ever walked along this road. It was already dark out, and we could see stars above us.

“Humans just aren’t that great. However much our civilization advances, we can’t seem to do anything to make ourselves happier,” I said, obviously, trying to impress her with something profound.

“Yeah…maybe,” she replied. She seemed kinda serious.

“Why do you ask?”

“I just met this guy, but…”

“You in love again? What about Tanaka?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am, but let’s put that aside for a moment,” she said, sitting up. She gazed at the wavering reflection of the city lights on the moving water of the river. “He’s from outer space.”

She looked serious. She had to be joking, but she didn’t seem to be waiting for me to laugh, so I took it as some sort of metaphor, and just nodded. “Mm-hmm.”

“But I don’t think he’s from some other planet. It’s like, in space there’s this big consciousness, and it sent him here to, you know, ‘test mankind’ or something. Kinda like the inspection robots that always show up in Hoshi Shinichi’s short stories? But he’s not a machine or anything. It’s just that his body isn’t something that exists on Earth. It can, like, turn into anything. So, when he landed on earth, he disguised himself as human and tried to examine the world, but there were a few mistakes, and he didn’t quite manage to pull off being human quite right.”

“…………”

“He’s evolved a little too much. He’s got more power within him than any human will ever have in a thousand years—no, in ten thousand years! Apparently, space is just so big that they couldn’t match him up with Earth time just right, so his true nature came out ahead of time, and the government or some kind of big corporation got a hold of him. But the idiots thought that he was just some mutant, and they did all sorts of experiments on him and cloned him. But, unlike him, that cloned copy turned into a brutal man-eater.”

I no longer had the foggiest idea what she was talking about. I elected to keep quiet until I could pick up the thread again.

“He wanted to communicate all this, but he couldn’t. He was programmed in such a way that he couldn’t talk to humans directly. It was so that he wouldn’t reveal his true identity to anyone. Which was fine. I mean, after all, he was sent here to test humans and see if they would be nice to him. He wasn’t here to negotiate or make speeches or anything. He was just here to observe, so they named him Echoes, since all he can do is reflect back the words that people speak to him.”

“…………”

“But the man-eater killed everyone in the research facility and escaped. Now, it’s off hiding inside of human society somewhere. But Echoes came after it, and he…and he met me.”

“What’s he gonna do if he catches it?”

“Fight it, I guess. If he doesn’t, it’ll just take over the world or something.”

“But he’s an alien. Why does he care what happens here?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point, but…basically, he’s just nice.”

“That’s it?”

“Isn’t it enough? Isn’t niceness the best motivation that someone can have?” she asked, looking at me kinda solemn. She then let out a sigh. “Half of this is just me reading between the lines. I think he’s got some sort of other complicated reason, too. You know, something about maintaining the balance of the planet. But if that was all…its kinda sad, don’t you think?” she whispered pretty downcast. She looked on the verge of tears, which made me uncomfortable.

I felt the kind of tightness in my chest that I thought that I’d left behind in Junior High.

I cleared my throat to hide this feeling, and said deliberately rough, “So, how the hell did this Echoes guy even explain all of this to you? I thought he couldn’t talk?” It was a stupid nitpick.

So she said, “Ah ha ha! You’re too smart! I can’t fool you,” and cackled.

“That’s all?” I asked. The story was a bit too detailed to be dismissed like this.

“Yep, I was just kidding. Just a stupid little fairy tale!” Kamikishiro said with an impish grin stealing over the corners of her mouth.

We sat in silence for a while.

She was the first to break it. “But if Echoes wins, he’ll probably go back to his home in the stars.”

“Sounds romantic to me. Kinda like the tanabata festival.”

“I wonder what he’ll tell them about us humans. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of him saying, ‘Don’t worry, they’re a good species,’ is there?”

“Where is he now?”

“Hiding at the school. Don’t tell anyone.”

I laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

Stupid promise.

Because of that promise, I got myself suspended and had to lower my ambitions for college. But since I turned all my friends into enemies and spent the rest of school isolated, I had nothing to do but study, and eventually, I used my grades to make up for the poor conduct report.

“The stars are so far away,” Kamikishiro said, gazing up at the night sky.

“They’re farther away than our lives,” I said. I’m not sure what her story really meant, but she’d managed to get the answer that she’d wanted out of me, as I told her, “But if you open your heart to Echoes, then I’m sure he’ll learn to like humanity.”

“You think so?”

“I want to think so. Because the story you told me leaves us no salvation.”

“Yeah. I hope you’re right,” she said, turning towards me and smiling.

But at the time, I didn’t want her to smile. I wanted her to get angry with me for saying something so stupid. I tried to think of something even stupider to say, but instead we headed back home. I walked off down the road to the station, and she went back towards the school, saying that she’d take the bus.

That was the last time I ever saw her.

She didn’t come to school the next day. Or the day after that. She never came again.

 

***

 

Two cups of American coffee appeared in front of Miyashita Touka and me. Miyashita picked up on the waitress’ look of keen interest and cooled down a little.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have slapped you. Still…” she said in a hushed tone.

“Don’t worry. I know. I’m an idiot.”

“I really do think that you need to let her go. She’s—what was her name?”

“Kamikishiro Naoko.”

“Oh, right. I didn’t know her very well, but I think if she really did like you, Akio, that she’d want you to move on now. That’s why she didn’t say anything when she left. Make sense?”

“That… That’d be nice.”

Truth is, I’m pretty sure she never thought twice about me.

Eventually, Miyashita Touka let me go, forcibly exhorting me to cheer up.

We parted at the door to the coffee shop.

“Take care. You know, you really ought to do something about that hero complex of yours. Gonna get you into trouble someday. You’ve got tests to study for.”

“I guess,” she said with her head to one side. “But still…”

“Suit yourself,” I said, turning to leave. It was then that she called after me.

“—Kimura-kun!”

I looked back and nearly tripped over my own feet.

It was certainly Miyashita Touka standing there, but for some reason, I felt like I was looking at a completely different person—a boy. It was as if she’d transformed or something.

“Wh-what?”

“Kamikishiro Naoko performed her duty admirably. You should perform your own duty, and make her proud. That’s the only thing you can do for her,” she proclaimed like she was giving some speech on stage.

Then she spun on her heel and was lost in the crowd.

“…………”

I stared after her, watching the throng flow onwards.

 

***

 

When my bus reached the stop in front of Shinyo Academy, it was already past sunset, and there were no students in sight. Apparently, even the sports teams gave up on practice and called it a day, once it got dark. This must be why none of our teams have ever even so much as qualified for the national tournaments. It hadn’t changed a bit since I was last there.

The gates were closed. Outsiders had to identify themselves over an intercom to get in, so I passed right by them.

I entered the school through a gap between the fences that Kamikishiro had shown me.

The darkened school grounds were silent like an abandoned building. The towering school building looked kinda like a giant, looming tombstone.

Until about a year before, I had actually come here every day. But now, I was a stranger.

There’s not much good I have to say about my years in high school, but I felt a pain in my chest when I thought about how little connection I had now to my past. I remember Kamikishiro, and the abuse that I took after the incident like it was yesterday, but the rest of it was all far too long ago.

“…………”

Why had I come here? If I was looking for the source of the letter, this place wasn’t going to be of any use.

But this high school was the only remaining connection that I had with Kamikishiro. Someone else had moved into her apartment. There were no traces of her left.

There was nowhere else for me to go.

She just wasn’t here.

Yeah. Somewhere inside, I had wondered if Kamikishiro herself had sent the letter.

But that was probably wrong. Even here in school, she wasn’t around. The letter was nothing but a prank.

Everything was over. It was all in the past.

“………”

I looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, and I couldn’t see the stars. And yet, I felt like I could see them like I had when I used to lay with her on the river bank.

She had told me all of her secrets, metaphorically. Told me; not Tanaka Shiro, not anyone else. And I never understood what she meant by it.

Wasn’t that enough? That’s all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I might fall in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then—impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy.

 

“Life is brief, young maiden, fall in love.”

 

I whispered a snatch of the gondola song that she always used to sing while I wandered around the school.

I found myself in front of the gym. Suddenly, I wanted to see the storage room where the interloper had hidden himself. Their exact relationship remained a mystery, but it was the last known trace of her.

I grabbed a flashlight from the emergency supplies, and shone it around the gym. I had forgotten half of the features of the place. Guess I really had wanted to wipe all recall of high school from my mind.

I found some kind of door or cover or something down by the floor, near the main entrance. Figured that must be it. So I hunkered down and opened it.

It was just an empty space. Iron pillars, concrete floor, bare ceiling. The foundations of the gym, I guess. Designed to absorb the impact of an earthquake.

I’d been there three years and never known it was there.

(Guess this isn’t it…)

I turned to leave.

But something moved near my foot.

There was a dry rustle.

“Mm…?”

I shone the light at my feet.

There was something black and dried. I thought it was a glove at first, maybe forgotten by a workman, but it was too thin for that.

It wasn’t meant to be put on over a hand. It was a hand.

“………”

I stared at it in shock for a moment…then screamed.

It was a mummified human hand.

(W-w-w-w-what the hell is this?!)

My knees gave out and I fell on my ass.

When Kamikishiro had vanished, she hadn’t been the only one. A number of other students had vanished both before and after her.

I’d never connected them before…but I could think of no other reason why a hand would be lying on the floor of the school.

Maybe it was because I’d kicked it or maybe it was the exposure to the outside air—but whichever the case, the hand crumbled away to dust before my very eyes. And within seconds, there was nothing left of it at all.

(What does it mean? What the hell happened here two years ago?)

But there was nothing to give me those answers. There was nothing for me to do but sit there in the dark, shuddering in fear…