Chapter 22
I eventually dry my tears and go back inside, but I'm even quieter than before. I sit at the end of a table and eat quietly - or I pretend to. "Eating" mostly consists of me rearranging my food in ways to make it look like I've eaten some of it. Nobody bothers me or forces me into conversation. I think I give off a bad vibe. I must seem like a cold-hearted celebrity bitch with no manners. However, most of the people there know I was close to Miki. We did work together in the public eye for years. Maybe they will keep that in mind before they judge me.
We get home very late that night. Lots of people are drunk as we leave, and I feel bitterness inside me start to take root. Do these people even care about her? Are they here just for food and drink? For show?
I crawl under the covers just past one and try to forget all about the "caring" guests.
I sleep until seven o'clock, but I have a strange dream. Strange as in disturbing. Miki's in it.
She's alive again and we're hanging out at some cafeteria at an indeterminate time in our lives. It could be last year. It could be a year from now. We're having a conversation about something mundane – umbrellas, I think - when two nondescript men come in and ask her to go with them. She says she will, but that she has one more thing to say to me. She walks up beside me and bends down to my ear, cupping her hands around it to whisper a secret to me. Instead of speaking, though, she slides something on the table in front of me. It's a piece of paper with something written on it in her handwriting.
I did it for you.
That's what the paper reads, but as I read it, I can hear her voice echo the words in my head. She walks towards the men, and they flank her as they walk out of the cafeteria together. I want to get up and stop her, but I'm frozen in place. The only movement I can make is twisting my head from side to side. I watch helplessly as she walks out the door and disappears into a crowd of people. She doesn't turn back once.
I wake up instantly to the generic ring tone of my cell phone alarm clock.
I remember every single detail of the dream, and I shiver. I don't quite know what to make of it. Maybe it's all my fault. I know she's told me in that letter of hers not blame myself, but I can't shake the feeling that if I hadn't existed, she wouldn't have been killed like that. If we'd never been friends in the first place, maybe...
I try to push it out of my mind.
Stupid thoughts, I think. Not productive at all.
The dream doesn't mean anything.
What's important is today. Today is the day of the funeral and cremation.
I get dressed right away and go downstairs, where I finally eat a meal. It's been a day since I last ate something substantial. Miki's mom gives me the details of the funeral, and I'm filled with a sense of déjà vu as just the two of us sit at the table in the living room and drink tea.
Miki's dad comes in and sits down. He doesn't speak a word. He's barely spoken since I've been in Hokkaido. He's always been a calm, friendly man, and we've always chatted a little during my visits here. I understand his pain and his silence, though. I don't take offence. I prefer the silence anyway.
The funeral is early. Nine o'clock. I go with Aunt Keiko again. This time I don't hesitate to get into the car. I don't feel much. Just emptiness and a dull pain at the back of my head, which is either a headache starting to set in or just general trauma packed in a temporary holding pen. A dealing technique to get me through the next few difficult hours.
The funeral happens. I may as well not be there. I don't pay attention to a thing that is said and done. I just stare at the casket. I even catch myself staring at Miki's picture for a while. The picture is from the last time she visited home, which was just last spring. You can see green trees behind her. Her eyes sparkle with sunlight. She's so happy. No idea what's to come.
Once the service is over and various family members are in tears, there's a lot of action. Friends and family say goodbye to each other. Miki's mom, dad, other family, and I head to the crematorium. They've insisted I come along. Miki's siblings have been unable to attend the funeral because they are snowed in in Alaska. A beautiful vacation that I'm sure has turned into a disastrous nightmare for them. Unable to attend their own little sister's funeral...
I get a chill when I step into the large, heated building. Bodies are burned here. Miki's about to be burned.
We're ushered into a large room. The casket is there. We're told we have a few more minutes. I look at the casket. I really look at it. I can almost see through it. I can see her cold, lifeless body sitting there. Her eyes glassy, her hair stringy, her skin so dried that nothing could ever fix it.
Suddenly my mind goes haywire. Something snaps. The holding pen explodes open, and my feelings rush out like charging animals. I start to cry. I put a hand up over my mouth to muffle the sounds I'm making. Every muscle of mine is tense, ready to run and steal her body back so that it won't be burned to a crisp. My body screams out to me, begging me to let it have its way.
No! I scream in my mind as I see her casket being slid into the house of fire that will consume her in a hellish blaze.
Don't burn her. Don't make her disappear any more than she already has.
Don't make it real
Before I can see the whole casket pushed in, I bolt out of the door and go outside. I take a deep breath of cold air and let it out as a strangled sob. I stagger off to the side of the building, not caring if there are people outside watching me. I sit down on the ground, my back against the cold, hard wall, and I bury my face in my hands.
I sit there alone, crying, shivering, sniffing. The family comes out hours later. Aunt Keiko looks relieved to see me safe and sound. She takes me into her arms and helps me back to her car. I'm blank by this time, my tears dried up on my cheeks, my makeup run beyond repair. From the car, I see Miki's father holding an urn, and I know that while I've been outside crying, the family has been picking through her ashes and remaining bones. I avert my eyes quickly.
The sight has struck something in me. A large gong rings out as a page ends. It signals the end of a chapter. The new reality starts now.
We drive home in absolute silence. There are no further celebrations. Nobody wants to eat or drink.
When I get back, I go straight to Miki's room and pack up my bags. I place a call to a travel agency and book myself the last seat on a flight back to Tokyo that evening. It's the most last minute plane ride I've ever taken. I suppose this is the kind of thing Shiba-chan did when she came home from Spain.
I go downstairs and thank the family, telling them I have to leave. They insist that I rest for one more night, but I tell them I have to attend to some urgent business.
I need to leave the house as soon as possible. I can't spend another minute in that house with that urn. I refuse to look at it. I barely know what it looks like. It's Miki's new skin, and I hate it.
Aunt Keiko talks me into accepting a drive to the train station from her husband. I agree to that, so I wait as someone brings my bags out to the car and I say goodbye to the family.
I tell Miki's mom I'll be in touch soon. There are still things we have to sort out. I've been given charge of Miki's possessions, and I'm sure some of them will be sent back here. She hugs me, and it makes me feel even sadder.
I wave goodbye to Aunt Keiko, and I walk out of the house.
I get into the car and am greeted by a surprise. Uncle Shun isn't there. In his place is Miki's dad. I hesitate for a moment, thinking I've made a mistake, but he takes off down the road before I can get out. I suppose this is the way it will be.
A minute later, he speaks.
"When's your flight?"
"Seven-thirty," I reply.
There's another spell of silence. I want to say something, but I can't think of anything appropriate. I've already expressed my condolences. As we drive on, I feel more and more depressed.
"You remind me of her."
He speaks the words quietly as though they're a fleeting thought that he hasn't meant to voice aloud.
"I... do?" I ask, at a loss.
Nobody can say that Miki and I were all that similar. We shared a lot of jokes, and of course we liked a lot of the same things; but our personalities and our behaviour, both public and private, were quite different. A ten-minute conversation with me, followed by a ten-minute conversation with Miki, would reveal two very different people.
"Everything that she liked and cherished in her life reminds me of her. You were her closest friend," he says in the same tone.
It's sweet that he's telling me this. Maybe he thinks I never knew that. Maybe he just wants to be saying something.
"I always wondered, though, if she loved her life and friends in Tokyo more than she loved her family in Hokkaido."
My heart sinks. It's such a hard thing to think about for any of us who have taken off and moved to a new place far away from home. We've established whole new and different lives in a new city. It's a struggle, and I've always wondered what the answer is. What would I do for her?
Anything, of course.
But would I choose Miki over my mother? My father? My sisters? Would she do the same and drop her mom and dad to come to me?
I often want to say "yes." I'd do anything for Miki, and she'd do anything for me. But if I get into details, I don't know what to think. If I could only save one - Miki or my mom - what would I do?
Sometimes I make myself choose. The times that I do choose, I always choose Miki. Then I feel guilty. How can I think that about my own mother? She raised me and let me go and pursue my dream, and she still loves me so much. Maybe I'm a terrible person to think that Miki is the one I'd save, not my mother. Soul over flesh and blood. How horrible.
But I would feel equally bad about the opposite. I would never, ever have wanted to abandon Miki. I would never have made the choice to let her die to save someone else. Or a million someone elses.
So maybe that's my answer. My cold-hearted but passionate answer. I'd save Miki.
Would she have done the same for me?
I'll never know, but my gut instinct tells me her answer would have been the same as mine. She would have chosen me over anyone else.
Of course, that's not something I can tell her father. She loved him very much. From climbing trees together to going skating, they had a solid relationship. I've heard stories about all the things they did together.
It's just that we were - no, still are - part of each other, so when one of us dies, the other can't live on properly.
That's what's happening now.
"I think she loved all parts of her life," I say out loud. "She always talked to me about Hokkaido and her family. So don't worry, Fujimoto-san."
I can see his face relax just a bit. He doesn't look happy (nobody is happy at this time), but he looks relieved
We don't talk anymore for the rest of the drive. We pull up in front of the station. I thank him very much, and I get out to retrieve my bags from the trunk. I'm about to say my final thank you when he calls my name and urges me to come up to the window. I go over.
"You, too. You're all she ever talked about."
He says it not accusingly, but with curiosity. As if he's trying to figure out Miki's mind.
"Me?"
"You, all you Tokyo people, her life there."
I smile softly for the first time.
"I'm not from Tokyo."
I know that's not his point, and he knows I know. For the first time, though, he also smiles. I don't know what we're smiling about. Maybe it's because in ways, Miki and I were exactly the same. Two girls from small towns on opposite sides of Tokyo, going into the big city and bonding, looking out for each other, taking care of each other.
"Take care of yourself," he says.
This is goodbye for now. I thank him again for everything he and his family have done for me, and I walk off to catch my express train to Sapporo.
The whole trip to the airport, I think about Miki's dad and Miki. I imagine them playing in the snow together, raking leaves together, and laughing together under the summer sun. I feel warm inside, and I'm happy to finally have that feeling.
A cloud ruins my mood. It is both literal and metaphorical. Freezing rain starts to fall outside, but a storm also starts to brew within me. I imagine snow stained with specks of blood that increase until the snow is dark red. That's what happens when killers are on the loose.
During my wait at the airport, I mail Shibata. I tell her I'll be landing at Haneda airport just before midnight and that I'll visit her tomorrow. She mails me back a rushed message. She's on her way out, but she has something to talk to me about tomorrow morning. Early.
I want to know what it is, but she doesn't reply to my next message. I resign myself to having to wait.
I nod off waiting for my plane, but I wake up in time for the boarding.
I stay awake the entire flight. We have a bumpy takeoff because of the storm. I stare out the window at the dark sky and the dark clouds. I can barely see a thing, but nothing can make me take my eyes away from the darkness. It comforts me. Calls out to my mind. Provides fodder for my anger.
I keep repeating everything that's happened during this brief trip up north. The wake and the funeral.
But I block out any memory and any stray thought of the cremation. I forget what the urn looks like. I erase the expressions on Miki's parents' faces after they walked out of the crematorium. Those are several things I never want to think about ever again.