Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel (10 page)

Mr. Mariya was hiding something from us.

With that woolly-headed thought in my heart, I went back to my classroom just before the bell rang.

“Sorry. I just started feeling sick, so I was resting in Mr. Mariya’s office.”

Akutagawa’s brow furrowed. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty much better.”

“Oh. That’s good then. I thought…”

Akutagawa faltered. He looked conflicted and then, just as he was about to say something to me—

“Nanase!”

I turned in surprise at Mori’s voice and saw Kotobuki with her hands on her desk, her face ashen, shaking.

“Are you sick? Nanase?!”

I hurried over to her, too.

Something clattered by her feet. A familiar-looking cell phone had fallen to the floor.

Wait, that’s not Kotobuki’s, is it?

I bent down and picked it up and was starting to snap it closed when Kotobuki snatched it out of my hand with incredible force.

I was shocked at Kotobuki, her eyebrows high, panting roughly, tears pooling in her eyes, and trembling as she glared at me, but just then our teacher came into the room.

“Excuse me, Kotobuki looks kind of sick, so I’m going to take her to the nurse’s office.”

Mori left the room with Kotobuki leaning on her. Kotobuki gripped the phone fiercely to her chest. Her face, which was tense and seemed frightened about something, hung down.

What was going on with her? I had caught a glimpse of a long text message on the screen, and it was bugging me.

Could it be that someone had sent a strange message to Kotobuki’s phone, too?!

Once the break started, I went to Mori’s desk to ask how Kotobuki was doing.

She answered with a troubled look.

“Um…I don’t really know, either, but she seems a little confused. She’s talking about this ‘Phantom’ thing…”

I had a vision of a cold shadow falling across me, and sweat covered my palms.

“Phantom…she said that?”

“I might not’ve heard her right. But I think you should wait here until Nanase comes back.”

My breathing became difficult, and my heart was constricted by anxiety.

So that message did have some kind of connection to the one I’d gotten, then. It had been about something so shocking that Kotobuki had dropped her phone.

It was after we’d finished cleanup that Kotobuki returned.

I watched, feeling frustrated, as Mori and the others surrounded her and started talking to her, chorusing, “We were so worried!” Kotobuki repeated something in an undertone to them with an awkward, forced-looking smile. When Kotobuki finally picked up her backpack and left the classroom, I chased after her. I called out to stop her in the hallway.

“Kotobuki!”

Her slender back twitched. But she didn’t stop—she started walking quickly, as if to flee.

“Hold on, Kotobuki!”

I grabbed her arm, and she turned around with tears in her eyes.

“Let me go…!”

“What happened? What did the Phantom do?”

Fear ran plainly through her wide eyes. An array of complex emotions passed over her pale face—terror, confusion, pain, covetousness, sorrow.

What had happened? Why was she so afraid? And why did she look so sad…?

Struggling, Kotobuki knit her brows tightly, and in a trembling voice, she whispered, “It’s nothing. Just leave me alone. I’ll look for Yuka by myself, so I don’t need you hanging around anymore…”

“But—”

I saw lucid tears gathering in Kotobuki’s eyes, and I grew even more hesitant.

Looking as if she was holding up desperately under the trembling of her voice and tears, Kotobuki said, “I—I mean, come on…When we went to Yuka’s house yesterday, you looked…like it was really hard on you…I hated seeing you like that! I can’t handle it! I’m not even your girlfriend, but I’m putting you through all this…I’m sorry. Thanks for everything you’ve done so far. But please, just leave me alone.”

My mind went white, as if I’d been socked out of nowhere, and all the strength went out of my hands.

Seeing my conflict had hurt Kotobuki as she stood beside me…

“Kotobuki?”

Omi appeared without the sound of a single footfall and spoke in a low voice.

“The librarian is looking for you. Could you come to the library?”

“…Okay,” she murmured hoarsely before going away with Omi, her head hanging down.

As they were leaving, Omi turned back and pierced me with a cold, contemptuous gaze.

“…Hypocrite.”

My legs buckled, my throat tensed, and I couldn’t utter a single word.

The part of me that wanted to help Kotobuki wasn’t a lie. My heart had ached at how she was sobbing so feebly, and I’d wanted to help her somehow or other.

But it was being at her side halfheartedly that had caused her to look that pained.

It hurt to breathe, and I thought my throat might rip open. I wanted to erase the fact that I had ever lived. I had truly, truly not meant to hurt Kotobuki at all. This was exactly like that time in the library. I was an awful hypocrite just like Omi said.

I stumbled down the hall, feeling pathetic, as if everyone in the world was looking at me askance and criticizing me. My heart had been hollowed out. It burned with a fiery pain, and tears started to come to my eyes with the desolation and suffering of it all.

No. I can’t cry. I don’t have that right.
How could I have made Kotobuki say something like that? She had looked like she was on the verge of tears.

I desperately blinked back the thoughts welling up in me.

What should I do now?

Kotobuki said she didn’t want me involved anymore since she was going to search for Mito alone.

But I couldn’t walk away from Kotobuki when she was in this state. Was it better to be with her even if I hurt her? Or should I go away for Kotobuki’s sake? I didn’t know.

Without realizing it, my legs took me to the familiar book club room at the western end of the third floor.

Even though Tohko wouldn’t be there.

Her ghost would be enough.

I missed her.

I missed Tohko.

I turned the cold doorknob and opened the door to the room, and then I heard a gentle voice.

“Hello, Konoha.”

Sitting on a fold-up chair by the window with her knees drawn up to her chest, flipping through a book, was the book girl, like a violet, her long, thin braids trailing to her hips.

Chapter 4—The Book Girl’s Value

“Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
is like a meat loaf fresh out of the oven. It’s got great texture, and even a child can chew their way through it. Even after you grow up, it’s warm and familiar and delicious.

“Scrooge, the rich, avaricious man who doesn’t trust anyone, sees his friend who died a long time ago on the night of Christmas Eve, and he’s advised to change his ways. His friend gives Scrooge an opportunity and a wish. The three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future appear to Scrooge one after another and show him things that he’d forgotten or chosen to overlook.

“A warm Christmas scene or a family going through life side by side despite their poverty or hope, trust; stuff like that.

“It’s just like a meat loaf that mixes together celery, carrots, onions, whole eggs, and olives cooked up fragrant in an oven, slicing it up with a knife; then you cut it up with a fork and take little bites.

“The celery and carrots you usually hate intertwine gently, subtly with the meat juices, and a refreshing sense of happiness fills your heart. The slightly salty, unique aroma of the olives also feels delicious.”

As she expounded with a beaming expression, she tore off a small corner of the page and brought it to her mouth.

Making a faint
kssh-kssh
sound, she swallowed, her white throat just barely moving, and then she smiled happily.

The clear sunlight streaming in the window gently colored her long, thin braids like cats’ tails, her small white face, her thin limbs.

Standing rooted beside the table, I felt like I was in a dream.

She’s…the real Tohko.

There could be no other bizarre high school girl who expounded on a book as she crumpled it up and ate it.

“What’re you doing?” I asked, finally finding my voice.

Tohko slowly turned her face to me, and she smiled cutely.

“I was wondering how you were doing. I just came for a little breather.”

“You’ve got a lot of time for someone getting Fs.”

“With your snacks to eat, I’m working really hard, so I should have at least a C now,” she answered lazily, totally unruffled by my jab.

But instead, I relaxed and snorted.

Tohko rested both her arms on the back of the chair and looked up at me with kind, peaceful eyes.

“Hey, Konoha. The snacks you’ve been putting in the mailbox this whole time have been really good. Crispy cookies baked with sesame, raisin cake with a slight taste of alcohol…peppermint jelly, sweet chai…I ate them up and imagined that even though I’m not around, you’re having fun…that something good must have happened to you.”

My heart fluttered at her clear voice, and I quickly looked away.

“I couldn’t make a girl studying for her exams eat anything weird, could I? You’re such a pig, you’d eat the whole thing.”

“Too true. But it’s something you wrote, Konoha. I would never leave any behind.”

What a crock. Even if it wasn’t me writing, she would eat every last scrap of whatever bizarre letters got stuffed into our mailbox.

“Actually, though, lately your snacks have been a little bitter, Konoha…”

Tohko’s face clouded over.

Had she come to see me because she was worried about me, then? Had my improv stories been that bitter?

I felt myself beginning to weaken somehow, felt my throat growing hot, and was on the verge of dumping all of it on Tohko.

No. I didn’t want to do something so childish. Not when Tohko was so busy with her exams.

As I gritted my teeth and forced the impulse down, Tohko suddenly grinned.

“Talking about snacks has given me a craving for something sweet.” She pressed, rattling her metal chair. “So, Konoha, what are you dropping off for me today?”

“Oh, I know. I’ll write something up right now.”

After I said it, I realized that I’d thrown an improv story I’d written earlier into my bag. It was the “essence of a fluffy, therapeutic vanilla soufflé” that I’d struggled over and fiddled with endlessly and then held in reserve the day that Kotobuki told me she hated me.

I took it out of my bag and set it on the table.

Then I wrote my cell phone number and e-mail address in ballpoint pen on a sky-blue bookmark lying nearby.

Tohko watched me, her face expectant, urging me to “Hurry, hurryyy.”

I held the paper in my right hand and the bookmark in my left, turned to Tohko, and asked, “Do you want the big one or the small one?”

Tohko reached out with both hands, her whole face beaming, without getting up from the seat.

“The big one!”

After Tohko had eaten the essence of a fluffy, therapeutic vanilla soufflé with “butterfly,” “Mount Fear,” and “a surfer,” she clutched at her chest, wearing a tortured look.

“Ugggggh. That macho surfer came sliding down Mount Fear in nothing but a
Speedo
! His soul turned into a butterfly and slipped out of his body, then went back to Mount Fearrr! The surfer turned into a
skel
eton! Is this a horror story? Is it? This isn’t vanilla; it tastes like fish cake with pickled radishes in itttt! It’s not airy at
all.
It’s all pricklyyyy. Augh, there’s even ground wasabi in heeeere!”

I turned my back on Tohko as she blubbered and slipped the bookmark into my student planner.

I didn’t give it to her after all.

“Urgh…ack…Hey, Konoha, what were you and Ryuto talking about on the phone?”

When I turned around, Tohko was clinging to the back of her chair, desperately fighting back her nausea.

Even so, she whispered haltingly, “Is there something that’s bothering you maybe? If you tell your president, maybe we’ll come up with a good idea.”

I couldn’t answer right away. In a strained voice, I asked, “Did Ryuto say something?”

“No. I heard him saying your name in the other room.”

“Were you eavesdropping?”

As soon as I took the jab at her, she jolted forward in the chair and started arguing heatedly.

“N-no! I didn’t have a glass up to the wall or anything! I don’t care how mean Ryuto was for not telling me, and even if I could hear everything through the paper-thin walls and even if I got worried because when Ryuto was talking to you on the phone it sounded pretty involved, I would never do something so crass as to eavesdrop!”

“There’s a ring from the glass around your ear.”

“What?!”

I pointed, and Tohko clapped a hand over her right ear.

“Not really.”

“Urk.”

“You did eavesdrop, didn’t you?”

When I pressed her, she grew defiant this time and began throwing a tantrum.

“But, but, but—it sounded like you were asking Ryuto for advice, and I worried and I could hardly study then! If I don’t find out, I’ll fail my exams and have to spend a whole ’nother year studying. If that happens, it’ll be your fault, Konoha! That’s right. It’s your fault for depending on Ryuto. So in order for your beloved president to be at ease and focus on her exams, come clean and admit what’s going on.”

Sigh…
Tohko was still Tohko.

Her selfish diatribe had drained me of all my energy.

There was no way to avoid someone like her going off. Tohko was a thousand times more childish than me.

“Okay, I get it. You can stop rattling your chair around like that. You’re going to fall over and hit your face again like you did before.”

I sighed and sat at the table, then started telling her everything that had happened so far.

Tohko pulled her chair up to the table. She furrowed her brows and looked sad at the story I told, and partway through, she put her index finger lightly to her lips and sank into thought.

When I was done, Tohko murmured, “Konoha, tell me the hints Mito gave Nanase about her boyfriend in detail, please.”

“Um…I’m pretty sure there were three of them. There are nine people in his family, he has a habit of walking around a desk when he’s thinking, and he likes coffee, I think?”

“Hmm…”

Her index finger still resting on her lips, she lost herself in thought once more.

“That’s unusual, having nine people in your family,” I said.

“I think Mito’s boyfriend might not have nine people in his family.”

“Huh?”

“This hint could point to something else entirely.”

“Something else? Like what?”

Tohko’s brows knit, and she looked a little troubled.

“I’m sorry. I don’t really know yet, either,” she murmured apologetically. Then she said, “But maybe Camellia is taken from Dumas’s
Camille.
”

“
Camille
? Oh, that’s an opera, right?”

Tohko started to tell me about
Camille.

“Yes. The original title of
Camille
is
La Dame aux Camélias
—which is French for ‘the lady of the camellias.’ The author is Dumas
fils
, whose father is the popular author Alexandre Dumas, famous for writing
The Three Musketeers
and
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Generally, the father is called Dumas
père
and the son Dumas
fils
.

“During his youth, Dumas
fils
was madly in love with Marie Duplessis, a high-end courtesan who was the cherry of the Parisian social world. He wrote
Camille
with her as his model.

“The protagonist is the naive young man, Armand—he’s a little like Raoul in
Phantom of the Opera
actually. When he comes to Paris, Armand falls in love with the courtesan Marguerite, who’s called ‘the lady of the camellias.’ Armand runs headlong into an intense passion, and Marguerite does love him but suffers from a disease of the lungs. Armand’s father convinces her to leave his son, so she tearfully steps aside. It tastes like a bonbon of high-grade whiskey inside expensive, bitter chocolate: sweet and glamorous, a little bitter, and melancholy.”

Mito, who wanted to become an opera singer, would naturally have known about
Camille.

And that the heroine Marguerite was a courtesan.

And if she had given herself the name “Camellia” because of that…what had been going through Mito’s mind when she did that?

Tohko told me the rest of the story.

“In the opera by Verdi, he changed the names from Armand to Alfredo and from Marguerite to Violetta. The last scene is a little different, too, and the title is
La Traviata.
In Italian, that means ‘a woman who’s strayed from the path.’”

My face twisted as pain stabbed into my heart.

A woman who’s strayed from the path.

Had Mito strayed from the path like the lady of the camellias had?

Had she wandered into a place from which she couldn’t return as a result?

Or had she hidden herself away for someone else’s benefit the way the lady of the camellias had withdrawn for Armand’s sake?

Where was Mito’s Raoul, her Armand? Or had he never existed like Kotobuki said?

With an intelligent look in her eyes, Tohko said, “Mito’s story definitely resembles the
Phantom of the Opera.
The real-life operas
Faust
and
Don Juan
appear in the
Phantom of the Opera
, too.

“But if we’re assuming that this disappearance is like the one in the
Phantom of the Opera
, then there’s a major hint you guys missed.”

“What do you mean?”

I placed my hands on the table and leaned forward.

“Why hasn’t Mito been dropped from the lead in the recital? If she’s missed ten days of rehearsals without permission, that’s strange. I know people are saying that she’s taking special lessons in secret or that she’s got a powerful backer, but I think there has to be pressure coming from somewhere.

“That person must be confident that she’ll appear in the actual show, right? In
Phantom of the Opera
, the Phantom threatens the opera’s owner and puts his beloved Christine onstage as the stand-in for the diva Carlotta. In order to do that, the Phantom changes Carlotta’s voice to that of a toad, and he even sabotages a performance.”

“Are you saying Mito’s supporter is the Phantom—her angel?”

Tohko nodded, her face serious.

“There is that possibility. There’s a limited number of people in a position to interfere with the casting. A teacher at the school, someone in the administration…whoever it is, that person might know Mito’s whereabouts.”

My breath caught.

“Well, Konoha?” Tohko asked. “Are you going to look into it?”

Every other time, she had said, “This is a top-priority investigation, Konoha!” and flown off without the least concern for my situation.

Pursing her lips, her gaze bright, she waited for my reply with great patience, like an older sister watching over the disappointment of a younger brother.

Her eyes said, “You decide, Konoha.”

My heart swelled, and my insecurity and hesitation rose up in my throat, competing with my desire to push ahead.

What more could I possibly do? I hadn’t even told Kotobuki yet that Mito might have been an escort.

But…

With Tohko watching me like this, I no longer wanted to turn my back on this. If I did, things would be the same as they had always been.