Brave Story (30 page)

“You—ah, we met recently, did we not?”

Wataru found he was standing at the entrance to the shrine. He could see the red crossbeams of the torii gate just behind the priest. Leafy green trees swaying gently in the breeze. Doves perched on shrine roof tiles.

“Have you…” Wataru began; then a ray of light stabbed through the chaos in his mind.
He can help me.
He grabbed the priest’s sleeve tightly with both hands. “Have you seen a boy, like me? He comes here a lot. He’s got a pretty face, like a doll. His name is Mitsuru. He lives near here—have you seen him? Do you know where he lives? Have you ever talked to him?”

Wataru yanked on his sleeve, but the short stocky priest stood firm and unmoving—though his expression was one of surprise. Peering at Wataru, he asked, “This boy, he’s around your age?”

“Yes, that’s right!”

“Mitsuru, yes, I see him here quite often. I’ve even spoken with him. He lives in the apartment building behind the shrine here. Is he a friend of yours?”

“Which apartment building is it?”

Two apartment buildings stood behind the Mihashi Shrine, one with a miniature red water tower on its roof, the other one taller, with chocolate-colored siding on the walls.

“Now that I’m not sure of. Never asked for his address.”

Wataru turned and tried to dash off, but the priest caught him by the arm. “Son, wait. Tell me what’s wrong. You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

Forgive me, but I don’t have a second to lose.

“I’m sorry,” Wataru said, knocking the priest’s hand off his arm. He ran straight into the shrine grounds, feet pounding over the gravel, and out the rear exit. The priest didn’t follow. He probably wouldn’t have been able to catch up to him anyway.

Wataru headed first toward the apartment building with the water tower. It was closest. He ran into the main entrance lobby, and stood before the mailboxes. Breathlessly, he checked the nameplates. The name Ashikawa was nowhere to be found.

He checked a second time. Nothing. He ran back outside. The other apartment building with the chocolate-colored walls stood with its back to the shrine, so he had to run down the length of the building to get to the entrance. Sweat ran into his eyes, making them sting. As he ran, wiping at his face with his hand, an ambulance siren sounded in the distance. It came closer and then faded away. It went off in the direction of the school.

He finally reached the entrance, finding a doorman in a moss green suit sweeping the floor by a pair of open automatic doors. He turned and looked over his shoulder, broom still moving, as Wataru ran past.

This building had almost twice the number of mailboxes as the last one. Before he could start checking them, he doubled over and put his hands on his knees, catching his breath. The tiles were so brightly polished he could see his reflection. A single drop of sweat fell to the floor.

The Ashikawas lived in apartment 1005. Wataru charged headlong through the entrance hall, running straight into a set of automatic sliding doors with a loud
smack!
The sound startled him.

This building had a security system. To get to the apartments, he had to go through another set of locked doors, with an intercom for calling people’s apartments.

Just my luck!

There was a panel with a button and a microphone directly to the left of the door. Fingers shaking, Wataru punched in the number 1005, when someone grabbed his shoulder from behind. It was the doorman he’d seen on the way in.

“You all right, kid?”

The doorman turned him around, and the man’s hand on his shoulder made his legs go weak.

“You ran straight into that door! Look, you’ve got a bloody nose.”

Wataru felt a warm trickle down his lip.

“You don’t live here, do you? What are you here for? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

As he was talking, Wataru heard a woman’s voice come from the intercom behind him saying, “Yes, who is it?”

“Ms. Ashikawa?” Wataru said, turning back toward the microphone. “I’m a friend of Mitsuru’s! I’m looking for him. Is he home? Can I see him?”

There was a brief pause, and the woman responded. She sounded worried. “You’re in Mitsuru’s class? Then, he didn’t go to school?”

Wataru felt the blood drain from his face.
If she’s asking that, it means Mitsuru isn’t at home either.

The doorman bent down in front of the intercom. “Ms. Ashikawa? This boy here is in elementary school, like he says. He seems to be in a big hurry.”

“Show him up.”

The automatic doors slid open. Wataru ran through, heading for the elevator. The doorman followed behind him. It seemed like he was going to show him the way, though he didn’t seem too pleased about it.

They got to the tenth floor and turned right out of the elevator. A slender woman was standing by the open door to the apartment.

“This is him, Ms. Ashikawa,” the concierge said, giving Wataru a push. “I don’t know what’s going on, but be careful. I don’t want any trouble like last time. If anything happens on my watch, it’s my responsibility, you see.”

The woman in the doorway thanked the concierge politely. He walked back, and disappeared into the elevator.

Wataru stood quietly, looking up at the woman. He could feel the warm trickle from his nose spreading. He was still bleeding.

The woman was very young. Wataru wasn’t sure exactly how old she might be, but there was no way she could be Mitsuru’s mother. She was really beautiful—a knockout. She wore a white sleeveless blouse and a light gray miniskirt. She was holding the door open with one hand, with the other resting lightly on her hip. A silver bangle shone on her wrist. Wataru was so sure the voice he had heard was Mitsuru’s mother that for a moment he stood there confused.

“Are you a friend of Mitsuru’s?” the woman asked, looking down at Wataru. It was the same voice he had heard over the intercom.

Wataru nodded silently. He only needed to nod once, but for some reason he kept nodding over and over, like a broken toy.

“Your nose is bleeding,” she said disapprovingly. She lifted her hand from her waist to her forehead and stood there for a moment. Then, sighing, she opened the door wider and waved him in.

While not particularly large, the room was bright and filled with sunlight. It was very clean. The furniture seemed like something from a designer’s catalog. Wataru’s head was spinning, so he couldn’t be sure, but it didn’t seem like the kind of house that people with kids would live in. He started to wonder if Mitsuru really lived here.

The girl shut the door and followed Wataru into the living room, taking a tissue out of a box on the coffee table and offering it to him. “There. Wipe your nose and tell me what happened.”

Wataru did as he was told. “I ran into the door downstairs.”

He pressed his nose with a tissue. It throbbed painfully. He hadn’t been able to feel it before, but now it hurt so much his eyes watered.

The woman pushed forward a chair on rollers for Wataru, and then sat down on a nearby sofa. Wataru sat in the chair. Sitting, their eyes were on the same level.

The woman looked like she was in even more pain than Wataru. “So Mitsuru really wasn’t at school?” she asked quietly.

“No, he wasn’t,” Wataru answered from beneath the tissue. His front teeth were hurting too. He was too scared to touch them, afraid they might be loose.

“What’s your name?”

Wataru introduced himself, and before she had a chance to say anything, he added “Mitsuru and I go to cram school together.”

The woman merely nodded silently. She didn’t seem suspicious at all. Wataru got the feeling that maybe Ashikawa never talked about school.

“Well, thank you for your concern,” she said, still looking pained. “You don’t have any idea where he might be, do you?”

“I haven’t seen him at all today.”

She nodded again. “He left a message. I think he’s run away from home.”

I suppose you could call that leaving home. So long. And where did he run away to? To some other place, some other world?

“Maybe you heard about me from Mitsuru. I’m his aunt.”

That explained her age.

“Mitsuru doesn’t talk much about home, so I really didn’t know anything. Just the rumors about him living overseas and stuff.”

For reasons Wataru couldn’t guess at, Mitsuru’s aunt suddenly looked even sadder. She put a hand to her forehead again. The bangle sparkled in the sunlight coming in through the window.

“But Mitsuru is really popular, you know,” Wataru added hastily. “He’s really good in class, and the girls are all over him.”

Mitsuru’s aunt looked at Wataru sadly; then she said in a whisper, “But he left. Leaving a note I don’t even understand.”

“What did he write?” Wataru asked, leaning forward. “He didn’t say anything about…about going to another world, did he?”

The woman looked up quickly, surprise in her eyes. “How did you know that? Did he tell you something?”

Wataru’s mouth snapped shut. He didn’t want to have to explain anything. If he could just read Mitsuru’s note first…

“You must have been a good friend of his, Wataru.” Mitsuru’s aunt reached over and touched his knee. Her fingers were warm. “You have any idea where he might’ve gone? I can’t let him do this. I can’t lose him…”

“Can’t lose him?”

She must think that when Mitsuru said he was “going to another world,”
he really meant he was going to die. Come to think of it, that makes much more sense than the truth.

“He didn’t say he was going to die in his message, did he?”

“No, he didn’t, but…” Her face twisted like she was going to cry. Even so, she was still beautiful. Wataru noticed some similarity in the line of her nose with that of Mitsuru’s.

“It was about three months ago, I suppose. He tried to commit suicide. Had you heard?”

Wataru shook his head, dumbfounded.

“No, I don’t suppose you would have. I’m sure he didn’t want to talk about it. It was right after he came here—he was spending a lot of time at home, alone. He must’ve gone stir crazy. He tried to jump from the roof, but luckily the concierge found him in time.”

Suddenly what the concierge had said about “not wanting any trouble like last time” made sense.

“I knew I wasn’t cut out for this,” Mitsuru’s aunt muttered.

It was becoming clear to Wataru that there were a number of unusual things about Mitsuru’s family and he was only beginning to scratch the surface. If only he had some clue, some gut feeling of how to proceed.

Relax, Wataru. Just remember the
Private Detective Meadows
series.
Wataru wasn’t particularly fond of text-heavy adventure games, but he had enjoyed that one.
I’ll just pretend Mitsuru’s aunt is the client, and ask her questions like Detective Meadows would ask. How could that be hard?
Mitsuru’s aunt was perfect for the role of the beautiful, mysterious woman who comes to visit the Meadows Detective Agency pleading for help.

“He said in his note that he was going someplace where no one could find him,” she said. “He said not to bother trying to look.”

“I-I might know,” Wataru stammered. “I might have an idea where he’s gone.”

Her grip on Wataru’s knee tightened. “Then take me there!”

“I would, but, I don’t…I don’t really know how to get there.”

She opened her eyes wide. “What do you mean? Is it far away?”

“Well, not exactly…”

“He didn’t ask you to keep it a secret, did he? Is that what this is about?”

That wasn’t exactly the truth, but, if you thought about it the right way, it wasn’t
far
from the truth. After all, the only people who knew about Vision were Mitsuru and Wataru.

“Yes, he did.”

“Well, we can’t leave him alone. He’ll die! When Mitsuru says he’s going to do something, he really means it. The last time he was already crawling up the fence on the roof’s edge when they stopped him. If the concierge had come a moment later…”

“Um, did Mitsuru call in absent today?”

The change in subject was so abrupt that for a moment Mitsuru’s aunt merely blinked. “Huh?”

“Did he call in absent to school?”

“Well, yes. This morning when I saw his note, I called his teacher and told him he would be absent today. I didn’t want there to be any commotion at school.”

Now that was odd. She didn’t want to cause a commotion at school? Wouldn’t that be the first thing she would want, as his guardian? Wouldn’t it be normal to call the school and ask for help?

“Did you call the school after that?”

“No, I didn’t, why?”

So she hadn’t heard anything about Kenji’s gang, though Wataru wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

The phone rang.

The phone was sitting in the far corner of the living room. It was a large unit, with a personal fax machine attached to it. Mitsuru’s aunt got up from the sofa to pick it up.

Wataru’s vision wavered, and he had a sudden feeling of dread. The summer before, he had gone with his father to a large art museum and seen the painting
Cypress Trees
by Vincent van Gogh. It was a bright, pretty painting, but he remembered being struck by the sky the most. It was filled with strange and crooked swirls. When he left the museum later that day, those swirls still turned behind Wataru’s eyes. When he looked up at the real sky, it seemed like it was spinning. And when he got on the train, the handrails were spinning. Everything was spinning! That night, when his dad took him to a restaurant for dinner, he was still obsessed with that van Gogh painting—he could barely eat a thing. That’s how it felt right now. If he looked out the window, at the sky, maybe he would see those swirls—a churning, swirling energy, flowing into everything, filling the world.