Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel (21 page)

Omi turned his face away, as if to keep us from seeing it.

“If Nanase went by Yuka’s house because she suddenly stopped hearing from her, it would have caused problems…”

Behind us there was the rustling sound of a step in the grass.

It was probably Kotobuki. She must have seen the messages I’d sent. I had said that we were far from the station, so she should take a cab.

Kotobuki had been out of school today with a fever. When I called her at lunch, she had apologized. Her fever had gone down, so she would be at school tomorrow, she said.

When I turned slightly, I saw Kotobuki standing in the shadow of the building, her cheeks flushed and out of breath, on the verge of tears.

Omi continued his story, unaware of her.

“If Nanase hadn’t walked over to Mariya that day—if Mariya hadn’t spilled his tears when he saw Yuka’s ring—I would have cut his throat. I know Yuka wouldn’t have wanted that, but I would have done it. Nanase…stopped me.”

With a searing pain, I recalled once again the dark despair of that day, the implacable sense that we were all trapped.

Two eternally parallel lines that would never reach an understanding.

Stones inside words clashing simply to hurt each other.

Kotobuki’s straightforward concern had been what overturned that state of despair.

“…Don’t get Nanase involved. ”

“She’s the only thing you need to keep your eyes on, Inoue.”

Omi bit down on his lip and hung his head.

He had probably also wanted to protect the friend that Mito held so dear.

Calling me on the phone pretending to be Mito and coming down so hard on me were also because he was worried about Kotobuki…I’m sure I looked unreliable, and he’d gotten annoyed.

Omi lifted his eyes awkwardly and looked at me with a clumsily hard gaze.

“…I was wrong to call you a hypocrite. Thank you for being there to support Nanase.”

My heart fluttered at those words.

“She’s the one who supported me actually.”

His tense eyes became a little timid, and a sad-looking shadow crossed them.

I realized what he’d just said was probably a good-bye, and I started.

“What will you do now?”

Omi’s face grew suddenly harsh again, and he turned his eyes away.

“I’ll go somewhere else. I’ve always traveled up till now.”

“What about school?”

“I’ll quit. I was only there as part of a ‘contract.’ And that’s over.”

“A contract…with Maki?” Tohko asked.

“I can’t answer that,” he answered resolutely.

I felt like he was giving up on a lot of things and was despairing, and my heart squeezed tight, so I said, “Why do you have to go? Can’t you stay here? You’re free, aren’t you? So can’t you keep living here the way you have been?”

“It won’t do any good…Even now, my foster parents are looking everywhere for me. They were my managers. They probably still think I have some commercial value. It’s too dangerous to stay in one place for long.”

“So you’re going to live in hiding forever? You’re never going to sing for people again?”

I gazed at the boy’s desolate profile, illuminated faintly by the light of the Christmas tree, and felt like crying.

He was like me.

A boy with the voice of a girl who, in the midst of brilliant admiration, disappeared suddenly from the public eye.

Myself, a novelist who had the name of a girl and quit writing after publishing one best seller.

It was like I was looking at myself, and I felt empty.

Omi raised his face and looked at me with darkly sorrowful eyes.

“Do you think Miu Inoue will write another book?”

It was like I’d been stabbed in the heart.

I would never write another novel.

An author was the one thing I would absolutely never be.

Two years earlier, I’d made that tearful vow.

I didn’t know how Omi knew my secret. Maybe he’d investigated me, too.

But maybe you feel it, too—the sympathy I have in my heart.

That we resemble each other.

And in fact, maybe that’s why he asked whether Miu would write another book.

I was sure he understood that I couldn’t answer.

And he probably wanted to convey that that was his answer.

The angel would never sing again.

“Singing didn’t make me happy.”

My heart broke at those sadly whispered words.

Novels had brought me nothing but disaster. I was tortured by that false version of myself, and I’d lost Miu. I had thought Miu Inoue was a beautiful name—but at some point it was disgustingly corrupted and became a name that gave me nothing but pain and remorse.

Sadness spread through the depths of my heart like ripples across the surface of a river.

With a self-deprecating smile on his lips, Omi said, “Mariya said that he wanted to be the Phantom, even if it meant being a monster. But I always wanted to be Raoul.”

I could tell that was his heartfelt wish.

The Phantom says it in
Phantom of the Opera
, too. That he’s tired of doing things normal people don’t do.

“Now I want to live like everybody else.”

“I want to have a wife like everybody else and to take her out on Sundays.”

“I have invented a mask that makes me look like anybody. People will not even turn around in the streets.”

Below the vibrant opera house, he built his own kingdom, and while he sang, played piano, and composed music there, the disfigured Phantom dreamed of living in the sunlit world without having to justify himself.

No one called him by his true name in the solitary darkness.

Tohko had said that I needed to read the story to the end.

Because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t know the truth about the story.

Just then, Tohko, who had been sadly silent, opened her mouth.

“Yes. I think so, too. Being Raoul would be such a happy, wonderful thing.”

Omi gazed at Tohko.

Tohko looked back at him, her eyes clear. The wind had begun to blow, and her long braids swayed in it slightly.

“
Phantom of the Opera
is a cruel fairy tale. A man who hides his disfigured face under a mask falls in love with a girl in unhappy circumstances, and she transforms into a princess through his magic. But the one she loved was a handsome young prince.

“Christine would never choose the Phantom.

“Even though he was a person who ‘would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind’ if only he weren’t disfigured—even though he’s a person she could sympathize with who hid his amazing talent—in the end Christine chooses Raoul.”

Her sorrowful voice scattered in the cold wind.

Omi listened to Tohko’s words with an expression of pain.

“
Phantom of the Opera
is that kind of story.

“But that’s exactly why this story spills over with sadness and is so beautiful.

“The gothic novel painted up in darkly decadent beauty transforms at the very, very end into a candid tale that makes your heart tremble through the truth the Phantom shows us—

“It’s like a thick, rich foie gras that sticks to your tongue being washed away, purified, and elevated in an instant by a dainty glass filled with chilled Perrier.”

The faint light of the moon shone palely on Tohko’s slender body and her small face.

Why did Tohko’s eyes look so sad?

Her face was determined, her eyes drooping, as if she were speaking to a phantom that was about to disappear.

“
Phantom of the Opera
wasn’t as well received as
Mystery of the Yellow Room
, another of Leroux’s works, which is called a closed-room mystery. They said that as a mystery novel, it was preposterous and full of faults, and as a work of fine literature, it was too lowbrow.

“But in this story, Leroux created an unforgettable character in the Phantom.

“When they finish reading the story, a lot of people are struck by the Phantom’s sorrow, and they can’t help but wonder what the path he traveled must have been like, relying on the clues offered in the story. And they hope he’ll be saved, whatever form it may take. When you finish reading the story, you feel like the Phantom is a real person.

“Christine wouldn’t choose him.

“But the reader won’t forget him.

“They won’t forget the Phantom’s lamentations, his life, his love.

“They love the disfigured Phantom who casts off his mask.”

Speaking with dewy eyes, maybe Tohko wanted to give something to Omi, who had lost everything and was on the verge of leaving.

Words that would be like a tiny light to warm his heart when he grew sad and alone in the future—

The best she could do, with all her heart, as long as time would allow was—

“You know, a lot of people really have loved the Phantom when they read
Phantom of the Opera
! There have been more movies and plays and other interpretations of this book than you could count! There have been so many studies of the Phantom, and there are even blond youths who wear no masks as Phantoms.

“The British author Frederick Forsyth, who’s famous for writing
The Day of the Jackal
, wrote about what happens to the Phantom afterward in
The Phantom of Manhattan
, in which he moves to America, and the author Susan Kay vividly, and with sensitive love and a fertile imagination, described the Phantom’s background and the reasons that led to him living in the opera house, which had only barely been alluded to in the original. Her book
Phantom
is a masterpiece you absolutely ought to read.

“The character of the Phantom who was born from a single book has found new life and spread around the world and is giving birth to new readers, to imagination, and to different stories. People’s imaginations have given new life to the Phantom.

“That’s how much the Phantom is loved, and he’ll continue to be loved. That’s how much charm the Phantom and this story have. But y’know—”

Tohko squeezed her hands into fists, her eyes drooped, and she shouted with power, “If you don’t read
Phantom of the Opera
to the very end, you wouldn’t know that!”

Omi’s eyes widened at Tohko’s energy.

The wind rustled the grass and trees.

Tohko’s face was tense and on the verge of tears. Her clear voice flared like quiet, sorrowful music.

“I love books, and I’ve gotten a lot of happiness, been comforted, been healed when I read them.

“I’ll read any story to the very end to get a true taste of it. But sometimes I wonder, what would happen if this story suddenly ended right here?

“What if the author had quit writing?

“When I think about that, I feel sad and stung, and I feel a pressure on my chest.

“If Gaston Leroux had ended
Phantom of the Opera
partway through, the Phantom would have remained an ugly monster. Neither Raoul nor Christine would have been saved.”

She looked straight up at Omi, who was wavering still, with her black, wet eyes; then Tohko murmured as if in prayer, “Keep on writing your story.