Brave Story (123 page)

That raised a lot of questions. Where was Mitsuru Ashikawa? What about Kaori Daimatsu? And Kenji Ishioka, for that matter?

Uncle Lou was rubbing his face with his well-worn hands. Wataru felt like he should comfort him somehow.
Really I’m fine. In fact, I’m beyond fine in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.

But he didn’t know how to say it. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up crying himself. Not that he was sad—but if he started talking, all the emotion he’d been holding inside would burst out, and he would cry.
Because I’m still a kid.

Because I’m no longer Wataru, the Brave.

Wataru leaned against his uncle, letting himself be supported by his arm. His uncle was warm and smelled of suntan lotion.

“Uncle Lou?”

“Hmm?”

“I guess I am a little sleepy after all.”

“Goodnight, Wataru.”

Wataru closed his eyes. The instant he fell into a light sleep, he began to dream. He was riding on the darbaba cart. Kee Keema was sitting in the driver seat, spurring the beast with cheerful yelps.

Finally, the tears came. His first tears back in the real world. They ran down his cheeks and over his lips. They tasted like home.

They stayed at the hospital until morning, but his mother still wasn’t up yet, so Uncle Lou took Wataru back to the apartment.

They ate breakfast at a pancake house. The place was empty in the early morning, except for a man in a suit sitting over in the smoking section reading a newspaper. The smoke from his cigarette drifted past Wataru, who was busily stuffing his cheeks with pancakes.

“Wataru.”

“What?”

His uncle was looking at him curiously, a Styrofoam cup filled with steaming coffee in his hand.

“What is it?”

Wataru’s uncle put his cup on the tray. He furrowed his eyebrows. “You know, you…”

“Yeah?”

“You seem grown-up all of a sudden.” There was a hint of surprise in his quiet tone. Wataru realized his uncle had been observing him for some time.

Wataru smiled. A nameless, warm feeling, one part gratitude and one part amusement spread through him.
It wasn’t sudden at all. I’ve just come home from a long journey.

“I’m just happy that Mom didn’t die,” Wataru said. “I don’t think that’s what she really wanted. I don’t think that was the right thing to do.”

Uncle Lou nodded, unable to speak. His eyes glistened with tears.

School was already out for summer vacation. Even if Wataru went, no one would be there. So, the first chance he had, he made straight for the apartment where Mitsuru’s aunt lived.

It was morning, and the doorman was piling up garbage in the waste bin to the side of the apartment. When Wataru arrived, he paid him no notice. But when Wataru came out again, panting for air, he stopped what he was doing and came over, a suspicious look on his face.

“What are you doing here, boy?”

“Uh…I…” The nameplate for the Ashikawa apartment was gone. Right there, on the mailbox in the entrance foyer with the number for the apartment where Mitsuru’s aunt had lived was a new, blank nameplate. “Did Ms. Ashikawa move?”

“Ashikawa?”

“Yeah, a young lady, living with a boy about my age. He and I were friends.”

The doorman put a hand to his forehead and thought. Then he grunted and rapped his knuckles on his bald spot. “Oh them! They moved.”

“When?”

“Just a while ago. Think it was the last day of school.”

“Did you see them when they left? Was it both of them? Was the boy with her?”

The doorman seemed flustered by this barrage of questions. He recovered quickly, though—the dour, worldly expression coming back to his frowning face. He glared at Wataru. “What do you want to know for? If you were really his friend, why didn’t he tell you?” Glancing back at the mailboxes, he continued, “Say, what did you really come here for? Haven’t I seen you around before?” But by that time, Wataru was already out the door and gone.

Wataru wanted to see Katchan more than anyone else. Unfortunately, his good friend didn’t have any news about Mitsuru.

But
Yutaro! Yutaro Miyahara.
He was friends with Mitsuru; they were the top students in the class. And they had even been in the same room.
Now where did Yutaro live…?

Yutaro was busy watering a row of morning glories and sunflowers with his little brother and sister in the small garden behind an old wooden house. His sister was tottering along, carrying a red watering can. Yutaro was busy using a dowel rod to prop up a sunflower stalk.

Wataru put his hands on the steel wire fence around the garden and called out to him.

“Good morning!”

Yutaro jolted upright and whirled around. “Hey there, Wataru. Didn’t see you. Good morning. You’re up early for a summer vacation day!”

Yutaro walked over to the fence. Wataru mumbled some hasty explanation for his visit. Yutaro’s brother and sister stayed in the garden, absorbed with counting the blooming morning glories.

“Hey, Yutaro, you know that kid Mitsuru Ashikawa?”

“Mitsuru? You mean the one in my class?” Yutaro asked without skipping a beat. “What about him?”

Mitsuru does exist! He’s here! I didn’t just dream him up.

“Do you…happen to know where he is?”

“Where?” Yutaro blinked. “He moved.”

This was the answer Wataru had expected. “He was a transfer student, wasn’t he? And he already moved away?”

“Yeah. He was in and out of here in a hurry. But I guess with his home situation being what it is and all…”

“Yeah. I was wondering—what was he like?”

Yutaro stared at Wataru for a second. “What do you mean, ‘what was he like’?” Yutaro laughed. “Why are you so interested in him, anyway? He wasn’t even in your class.”

“Well, we were in the same cram school.”

“Really? But I never saw you talking to him. He was the silent type, that one.”

Wataru nodded. He wanted to know more…but he couldn’t think of any questions that wouldn’t make Yutaro even more suspicious than he already was.

Wataru was back in the real world now, and Mitsuru was gone.
It’s like he was never here in the first place…

“Wataru,” Yutaro called out. “You know…”

“Yutaro!” came his little brother’s shout from behind him. “I’m trying to count the morning glories but Mayumi keeps gettin’ in the way!”

Back in the garden, the little girl burst into tears. Yutaro hesitated, unsure for a moment whether to be the big brother to his siblings or the friend to Wataru.

“Your sister’s crying,” Wataru said, letting him go.

“Yeah.” Yutaro looked over the fence, and turned toward his sister. Then he stopped and turned back. “The moms at school, they talk too much,” he said quickly, as though he was in a rush to get the words out before he changed his mind.

“Huh?”

“There was a PTA meeting before summer break, and this one older lady there loves spreading rumors, and she told my mom…”

Wataru already knew what Yutaro was going to say. For a second, he was afraid that news of his mother’s suicide attempt had already made the rounds, but that would have been much too fast. No, Yutaro’s mom had doubtlessly heard about the events leading up to that. A couple of kids in Wataru’s grade lived in the same apartment complex. They had probably heard something, or the families heard something, and word had gotten around.

Grandma was shouting pretty loudly that night.

“Things are pretty rough at your place, I guess?”

“Yeah.” Wataru nodded. Yutaro was as safe a person to talk to about this as anybody. And somewhere along the line, Wataru found he had the strength to talk about it without getting too weepy.

“I know what it’s like,” Yutaro said, rubbing his lip. “My dad’s remarried. Takes a while for things to settle down.”

Behind him, his little sister had stopped crying. She and her brother were crouching down by the morning glory patch, digging up something in the soil.

“It was…tough, when it happened.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Yutaro smiled. “But it got better. I like my brother and sister too. Just wish they were a little quieter.”

Now his little brother started crying. His sister was hitting him over the head with the red watering can.

“Yeah,” Wataru said. He felt his throat tighten and couldn’t say any more.

“So, anyway,” Yutaro said, sounding a bit unsure himself. “I guess I, well, you know…” He didn’t know what to say either, but his eyes told Wataru enough.
Hang in there.

“Yeah.”

“Yutaroooooo!”

Now both of the kids were crying. Yutaro gave an exaggerated sigh, but he was smiling when he turned around to run back to them.

I wonder how many morning glories there were after all?

On the way back home, Wataru’s mind was a blank. He thought of nothing. In his head, there was only a question mark where the face of Mitsuru Ashikawa had been, and in his chest, a lingering feeling of relief from his talk with Yutaro.

He wasn’t even paying attention to where he was going, when he saw Katchan walking toward him on the other side of the street. He was wearing a pass to the municipal pool around his neck and yawning. It took him a moment to recognize his friend.

“Oooooornin’.” Katchan waved to Wataru, not even bothering to stifle his yawn.

Wataru stopped, frozen in place, staring at Katchan.

Say, Katchan, you remember that exchange student, Mitsuru Ashikawa?

“What’re you doing out here this early in the morning? I know that you didn’t come from the pool, I was just there!”

“Gotcha.”

“What?” Katchan craned his neck, looking at Wataru. If this early rising was to become a trend, Katchan clearly did not approve.

“Thanks for freeing those birds for me.”

“Huh?”

Seeing his expression, it was clear that Katchan didn’t know anything about the birds. He never got them, and he never set them free.

“Nothing,” Wataru said with a laugh. “Forget about it.”

“You look scruffy, man. In fact, you look like you haven’t slept a wink.” Before Wataru could respond he could see Katchan’s brain begin to work double time. “Wait…” now he looked worried. “I hope nothing happened at home, with your old man?”

Wataru knew he couldn’t hide the truth from Katchan, but there didn’t seem to be any point in telling him the whole story now.
Maybe later, when things have settled down a bit.

“Katchan?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know what happened to Kenji…from the sixth grade?”

“You mean Kenji Ishioka? That creep?”

“Uh-huh.” Wataru chose his words carefully. “Did he lose his memory or something? Or did he go missing for a while? And when he came back, did he act like his soul was gone?”

Katchan’s eyes focused on Wataru’s face. He walked straight over to his friend and waved his hand right before Wataru’s nose. “Hey! Mitani! Earth to Mitani!”

Wataru laughed. Katchan kept waving. “I know why you didn’t sleep last night! You were playing that game,
Detective Meadows: The Case of the Disappearing Client
, weren’t you! They say it’s the best one in the series! Once you pick up that controller, you aren’t sleeping until you’re done. Well, time to wake up, Wataru. People we know don’t go missing. Not in real life.”

Wataru laughed while his friend grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Mitani! Mitani!” Katchan was acting like a cop trying to keep a wounded partner from losing consciousness.

“Kenji hasn’t gone missing. His memory’s fine too, far as I know. Though I did hear that he hasn’t been on the warpath lately. Maybe he’s gone soft. Maybe somebody took that crooked mean streak of his and straightened it out for him.”

Hearing that was enough for Wataru to understand.

It was in the afternoon when the call finally came from the hospital. Grandma had come over from Chiba, and Uncle Lou and Wataru went to the hospital together. Uncle Lou waited in the hallway while Wataru went to see his mother in her room.

Kuniko cried, and Wataru cried. She apologized, and he apologized.

Then, the most unexpected thing happened.

“You know, Wataru,” his mother said, “while I was asleep, I had a really odd dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

“Well…” his mother began, but just from her expression, Wataru knew. He could see it in her eyes.

“It was the strangest thing. It was like another world—like something in one of those video games you’re always playing. And you were there. You were traveling, learning to be a warrior. And you were with this big lizard man, and a girl with cat ears. It looked like you were having fun.”

“Do you remember much about my trip?”