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  “I got letters from her and she sounded strange, that’s why I asked.”

  “You got letters? What did they say?” Yuriko simmered with curiosity.

  “Nothing important. Why’d you call?”

  “There’s something I wanted to discuss with you.”

  This was odd, I thought, and I felt my guard go up. I couldn’t help but predict the worst. The sky outside had darkened and the rain had grown heavier. I’d be soaked before I could even make it to the station. I was already too late to get to homeroom in time, so, resigning myself, I sat down on the tatami matting. Grandfather had spread newspapers out in the small room and was moving his bonsai in from the veranda. He’d left the door wide open, and the roar of the rain filled the room. I raised my voice. “Do you hear the rain? It’s really pouring here.”

  “I don’t hear it. Do you hear Father crying? He’s really making a din too.”

  “I don’t hear him.”

  “I can’t stay here now that Mother’s dead,” Yuriko said.

  “Why?” I screamed.

  “Well, Father’s definitely going to remarry. I know all about it. He’s seeing a younger woman at the factory, a Turkish girl. He’s convinced no one knows about it. But Karl and Henri and everyone—they all know. Henri told me, see. He says he’s positive the Turkish girl is pregnant, so I’m sure Father will marry her as soon as he can. That’s why I can’t stay here. I’m coming back to Japan.”

  I jumped to my feet in horror. Yuriko was coming back? I’d just finally gotten away from her! It had only been four months.

  “Where do you plan to live?”

  “What about there?”

  Yuriko’s voice was wheedling. I stared after Grandfather, who was busily dragging the bonsai into the room, his shoulders wet from the rain, and I answered very clearly. “Absolutely not.”

  • 4 •

  I trudged resolutely through the downpour to the bus stop. The rainwater streamed in torrents along the asphalt road, swift enough to create a channel. One false step and I’d be soaked up to my calves. The bus I always caught rumbled up the road behind me and passed by, its windows fogged white with the breath of the passengers. I could imagine the unpleasantness of the humidity inside.

  What time was the next bus? Would it get me to school in time for homeroom? I really didn’t care now, one way or the other. I could hear Yuriko’s voice playing over and over in my head. What am I going to do? What can I do? That is all I could think about.

  If Yuriko came back to Japan with nowhere else to go, we’d have to live together again like sisters. Without any other relatives to rely on, she’d have nowhere else to go but Grandfather’s tiny apartment. The very thought of having Yuriko there gave me goose bumps. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, there’d she’d be on the futon right next to mine, her dark eyes looking right at me, and then I’d be having tea and toast and jam with her and Grandfather. Shit!

  Yuriko would hate the smell of grandfather’s cheap pomade. She’d be angered by the way his bonsai cluttered up the place, and she’d find the way we help out around the apartment complex a hassle. And as soon as Yuriko made her presence known around here, you can be sure everyone in the apartment complex and even the shopping arcades would be seething with curiosity about her. The comfortable balance that my grandfather and I shared would be shattered. Grandfather might even go back to being a criminal!

  But what I hated most was the idea of being fascinated by that monster Yuriko again, of being enveloped by her presence. At no point did I feel secure. Suddenly I thought of my mother and her suicide.

  I guess they can’t accept that a shabby-looking Oriental like me could ever produce a beauty like Yuriko. The reason my mother chose to end her life was not because she couldn’t deal with her loneliness, and it wasn’t because my father was cheating on her. Wasn’t it because of Yuriko? Because of her very existence? When I heard Yuriko was coming back to Japan, an unexplainable anger began to build in my head. I resented my mother for killing herself and I hated my father for his infidelity; then, just as suddenly, I began to feel sorry for my mother, and I knew a kind of affinity with her. Tears began to well up in my eyes. Out there in the rain I was able to cry over my mother’s death for the first time. Perhaps you will find it hard to believe, but I was only sixteen. Even I had my sentimental moments.

  I heard the swish of a car approaching from behind, cutting through the water. To avoid getting drenched I took cover under the awning of a bedding store and waited for the car to pass. It was a huge black car—the kind a government official might use, the kind you hardly ever saw in this neighborhood. The car pulled to a stop right next to me and the window came down.

  “Want a ride?” Mitsuru grimaced as the falling rain struck her face. I stared at her in disbelief and she waved me in. “Come on, hurry!”

  I folded up my umbrella and climbed in. It was freezing inside and the smell of cheap air freshener wafted through the car. I guessed it belonged to the driver, a middle-aged woman with disheveled hair. She turned back to look at me.

  “Are you the kid who lives in the P Ward government housing?” Her voice was so low and husky it sounded as if her throat had been raked with sandpaper.

  “Yes.”

  “Mother, isn’t that a bit rude?” As she scolded her mother, Mitsuru dabbed at my wet uniform with her handkerchief. Her mother focused on the traffic signal ahead of her and neither apologized nor laughed. So this was Mitsuru’s mother? Being naturally fascinated by human relationships and the way heredity functions, I stared at the woman intently, wondering what about her resembled my friend.

  Her hair was unkempt and seemed to be growing out of a perm. Her skin was dusky and showed no signs of makeup. She was wearing some gray jersey outfit that you could hardly call a dress; it looked more like a nightgown. I couldn’t see her feet, but I was sure she’d be wearing sandals with socks or a pair of grimy sneakers.

  Could this really be Mitsuru’s mother? She was even worse than my own! Discouraged, I compared her face to her daughter’s. Mitsuru felt my gaze and turned to look at me. Our eyes met. She nodded, as if in resignation. Mitsuru’s mother smiled, showing a row of tiny teeth that not only looked nothing like Mitsuru’s but were also ill suited to her face.

  “It’s unusual, isn’t it, for someone from around here to attend that school?”

  Mitsuru’s mother was a person who’d abandoned something. I suppose you could say it was reputation and social dignity. At the matriculation ceremony I’d sneaked glances at the parents of the other students. They were on the whole wealthy, a wealth they took pains to reveal discreetly. Or perhaps I should say that they were adept at displaying their wealth by keeping it hidden. Whichever way you looked at it, the operative word here was wealth.

  But Mitsuru’s mother was completely indifferent to that attitude toward wealth. Perhaps she’d espoused it earlier and then abandoned it, walked away from it entirely. The parents of the wealthy children manifested pride in their offsprings’ intelligence. Even the salary workers refrained from being ostentatious. Mitsuru had told me that her mother had ordered her not to let anyone know she lived in P Ward, so seeing her mother looking so shabby was completely unexpected. I had assumed she would be the kind to make a fuss over her appearance.

  “Have you been crying?” Mitsuru asked.

  I looked at her without answering. Her eyes were brimming with an ill-temperedness that I’d never seen before. I had seen her demon. Just then, for a fleeting moment, I had caught hold of her demon tail. Was she embarrassed? She averted her eyes.

  “I got a phone call just a bit ago. My mother’s dead.”

  Mitsuru’s face darkened. She twisted her lip between her fingers as if trying to wrench her mouth from her face. I wondered when she’d start tapping her big front teeth with her fingernail in her usual manner. I felt I was in a battle with her. But then she caved in completely.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “So