Brave Story

  Wataru shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It’s like you say—I mean, Dad tried to leave when I was out of the house.” The likelihood that he would try avoiding any sort of direct contact with Wataru was high. Wataru looked back at his friend. “Let’s play a game or something.”

  Katchan slowly picked up the game controller. The mood was still dark. Wataru’s mouth twitched, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Come to think of it,” Katchan said, a little too loudly, “You go to cram school with that Mitsuru kid, right? Did you hear what they were saying?”

  Wataru picked up the change in topic with relief. “What about him? He take another ghost picture or something?”

  “Heheh. You haven’t heard!”

  It turned out he didn’t grow up in America at all.

  “The story goes that his uncle or something works at a computer company, and got transferred to some place in America—some place no one had ever heard of. Nothing famous like New York.”

  All Mitsuru had done was visit his uncle for a year before transferring to their school. He was born and raised in Kawasaki.

  “No way!”

  “But he speaks English pretty good, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah. It wouldn’t take long in America to get better than us, that’s for sure.”

  Knowing Mitsuru, he hadn’t been the one to start the rumor about him growing up in the States—in fact, he was most likely the one who had set the record straight. That the truth had come out now was more a testament to how well Mitsuru was getting along with his classmates. The less people knew about someone, the bigger the rumors tended to get.

  Something occurred to Wataru. “I wonder why he was living with his uncle for so long? Maybe something was going on with his family?” Given his current circumstances, it seemed like a rational thing to think. Maybe that was the reason Mitsuru was so odd. And why he could be scary sometimes…

  “So you don’t hang with Mitsuru much?”

  “Not at all,” Wataru said quickly. “We talked a few times, but…he’s weird. Kind of stuck up.”

  The conversation at the shrine—he remembered having talked to Mitsuru at length, but for some odd reason he couldn’t remember a single detail of what they had said.

  Memories of Vision had disappeared from Wataru’s mind. The wizard, the door, Mitsuru running—he had completely forgotten the dire warnings to stay away from the haunted building. He had even forgotten about Mitsuru’s threats. In fact, his interest in Mitsuru had waned considerably.

  “Maybe he’s got issues,” Katchan said, gripping the controller. “I hear no one’s ever been over to his house to play or anything.”

  Wataru picked up the second player controller. “Maybe he’s not as popular as we thought?”

  “He gets along with Yutaro fine. But I don’t think he’s been over to his house, either.”

  “Where do you hear all this from, Katchan?”

  “Sakuma told me. He’s in with the girls in class.”

  “Running-mouth Sakuma? Biggest yapper in school?”

  “He wanted to get in with Mitsuru real bad when he first came to school, but Mitsuru wouldn’t give him the time of day, so he lurked in the new kid’s shadow and listened. You know, like a private eye.”

  “More like a stalker.”

  “I wonder what’s up with Kenji’s gang? Think they’re still after that ghost picture? Remember when they surrounded Mitsuru in the library?”

  Wataru’s memory shuffled briefly, and the scene in the library on that rainy day came into focus. Those eyes fixing on Wataru through the window.

  How did he get Kenji and his goons to back off, anyway?

  Questions began to bubble up in Wataru’s mind like boiling water on the stove—questions he hadn’t even thought about asking until now, victims of that strange gap in his memory.

  Wataru hadn’t noticed anything was missing. The grim reality of his life had risen like a shroud over his brain. When he wasn’t looking his memories had begun to slip away.

  Vision was getting further away.

  “Guess what? I can do the midair combo off the crimson lotus tri-kick now! Wanna see?” Katchan grinned.

  “Of course I want to see! Are you kidding?”

  “I kid you not, my friend. Check it out!”

  The sun set while they played.

  Wataru went straight to Katchan’s house after classes let out the following day. Katchan’s parents were busy getting the bar ready for the evening, and the phone on the second floor was available.

  Katchan’s number worked like he said it would. When he called, Akira was at his desk. The call went right through.

  Wataru took the offered receiver and put it to his ear, hearing nothing but the steady thud of his own heart that seemed to have moved up into his ear.

  “Dad?”

  Akira Mitani, expecting a phone call about a lost article from some loud bar, paused. Wataru listened intently to the silence.

  “It’s me. Wataru.”

  No answer.

  “I-I’m sorry to call you at work. I didn’t know your cell phone number, and Mom wouldn’t tell me. I just…I just wanted to talk to you.”

  Katchan is staring at me. He’s tugging at his ear, nervous, like he knows he shouldn’t be watching but he can’t help it. He’s worried.

  “Dad…”

  “This…isn’t the best place for me to talk.”

  “What should I do?”

  There was a pause. The office where Akira worked must be very quiet. Wataru couldn’t hear a sound.

  “You don’t have anything at school this Saturday, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how about we meet, just you and me?”

  Wataru’s heart lurched back into motion, blood surging through tingling limbs with dizzying speed.

  “Okay.”

  “Someplace close by is good. Remember that city library we went to, what was it, last year?”

  The library was about an eight-minute bus ride away from home. Wataru’s home.

  “Yeah.”

  “How about there, in front of the checkout counter? Noon.”

  “Exactly noon? You mean, like twelve o’clock? Okay, that should be fine.”

  Akira told him his cell phone number. Wataru hastily copied it down and memorized it. It was like he had received the secret number to a padlocked cage. But what’s inside?

  “Wataru…”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “I don’t want you to be angry with me, but, when we meet, I’d like it to be just the two of us. You see…”

  “No problem,” Wataru cut him off. “I won’t tell Mom. I wanted to talk to you alone too.”

  Akira said goodbye. Wataru thanked him, and held the phone to his ear until he heard the click.

  “So you gonna meet him?” Katchan asked, leaning forward.

  “Yeah, on Saturday.”

  Wataru’s voice sounded strained and thin. For the first time, he realized he was on the verge of crying.

  “Alone? What about your mom?”

  “It’s just me this time. I promised.”

  “Whoa,” Katchan said seriously. “I guess that’s how it’s got to go down. But hey, great! You two can talk all you want, and you can get him to answer all your questions. Who knows, sounds like it’ll probably be good.”

  “Thanks, Katchan.”

  “Not at all, man.” Katchan grinned. “You just come to me when you need to make things happen. Chop chop.”

  Wataru was on pins and needles the whole week. Every day things flustered him to the point that his mother started asking him what was wrong, and of course he had no answer. He had even begun to worry that he might say something in his sleep and blow the whole thing.

  On Saturday morning, he woke up at five o’clock. Later, when he went out, he told his mother that he was going to the library. Kuniko, not suspecting a thing, gave him ¥500 for the bus trip and some lunch. The bright morning sun shon
e harshly on her face as she waved goodbye. She looked older than Wataru had ever seen her before.

  A washed and wrinkled curtain hung out to dry.

  He arrived a full two hours early, so he walked through the open stacks, picking up books on a whim and leafing through the pages. Nothing he read stuck for longer than a passing moment; the rows of text flowed in and out of his head like water from a faucet.

  Akira arrived right on time. On this day he was wearing a dark green polo shirt and white pants. His sneakers were sparkling-white new. Wataru had never seen any of these clothes before. He saw too that his father was wearing rimless glasses with small lenses. Wataru knew he was a bit nearsighted, but he’d never seen him wearing designer glasses before.

  They looked good on him.

  “What, you’re already here? Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

  He seemed relaxed, quiet, no different from the father Wataru had always known. Gone without a trace were the poorly shaven face, the husky voice, the slumped shoulders of the night he had left.

  It was amazing that it had already been two weeks since then. Wataru looked up at him, trying to put his thoughts into words and failing miserably.

  His father had lost weight, though not as much as his mom. But he didn’t look—Wataru wasn’t sure if this was the exact word—quite so stretched out. Rather, he looked like someone who, as Grandma was fond of saying, had taken a swig from the fountain of youth.

  That’s ridiculous.

  It was almost an insult to imagine that leaving home had somehow put a spring in his father’s step. An insult to whom? To me. And Mom.

  “No need to stare, Wataru. It’s me, I promise,” Akira Mitani said with a chuckle. Wataru blinked, but he still couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say, so he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Mom gave me ¥500 for lunch.”

  “Oh? Well that can be your secret allowance, then. I’m buying today. What’ll it be?”

  Wataru couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to eat right then. Anything’s good. We can just walk around and go anywhere. As long as I’m with you, Dad, I’m fine.

  “There’s a nice breeze today, how about we go for a walk in the park? I came through there on the way here. There’s a hot dog stand.”

  Wataru followed his father out of the library and toward a nearby park. They walked along a lazily meandering path until they reached a central square with a fountain. There were people sitting here and there, but luckily one bench was unoccupied.

  “This’ll do,” Akira said.

  The hot dog stand was in a converted van parked by the edge of the square. The proprietors were a fat, smiling couple, reminding Wataru of a pair of snowmen. He asked for two orders of hot dogs and cola, and the man recommended a side of fresh fries. Stepping closer to the van, Wataru noticed a girl—probably about preschool age—sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle and licking a vanilla ice cream cone. She must be their daughter.

  Akira and Wataru sat next to each other on the bench and ate lunch. Wataru couldn’t care less how it tasted, but biting in, he couldn’t help but notice that it really was a delicious hot dog. Akira seemed impressed too. He said he wished there was a vending truck like this near his office. “It’s hard to find a good place for lunch.”

  Wataru remembered there was a time, many years ago, when his father used to bring a lunch to work from home. Later, his division had changed, and he started having more meetings with clients, so he stopped taking a bag lunch.

  His father asked him questions in an easy tone. How was school going? How’s Katchan doing? Were you happy with your grades from the first semester?

  Wataru found himself slipping into a peaceful, familiar rhythm. For a brief moment, nothing was wrong at home. They were just here on a pleasant walk. Back home, Mom was doing the laundry, hanging out the sheets, polishing Dad’s shoes, ironing Dad’s T-shirts…

  The conversation died, and they sat side by side in silence. The fountain splashed noisily in the middle of the square.

  “Where did you get those glasses, Dad?” Wataru asked. He knew there was a conversation he should be having right now, questions he needed to ask, but they were all locked up tight in a dark room, and he couldn’t find the way inside.

  Akira pushed the glasses higher up his nose. “They look funny?”

  “No, they look good.” A question brushed by the corner of Wataru’s mind. Did she pick them out for you, Dad? Wataru let it slide, and it drifted off into space, unspoken. “They look good, but you kind of look like a different person. When I first saw you, at least.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I suppose I do,” Akira said, pushing up his glasses again. “I’m not, of course. I’m the same as always.”

  “Dad?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Are you never coming home?”

  An impossible question to ask. Is that why it had come so easily?

  Akira looked at Wataru through the tiny lenses and then slowly lowered his gaze. Drops of ketchup from his hotdog splattered on the ground, just barely missing his shoes.

  “Mom said that if we waited, you’d come home. That there was nothing to worry about.”

  The park around the hot dog stand was lively with customers. The benches were packed. Children much younger than Wataru were playing in the fountain, splashing water on each other and laughing. The droplets caught the light and shimmered as they fell to the cobblestones.

  “So, is she right? Is that what I’m supposed to do?”

  Akira took off his glasses, set them on one knee, and slowly rubbed his face with both hands. He looked at Wataru. “I’ll always be your father.”

  The five words ricocheted off Wataru’s heart like skipping stones on water. “That’s not what I asked. You know that’s not what I asked.” And Mom thinks you’re a coward for saying that, he thought, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Akira turned his eyes toward the fountain, passing over the happy-looking couples and children. For a while he just sat, quietly, as though stupefied.

  Then he put his glasses back on and turned back to face Wataru. It was as though he had been on break when he took them off. Now they were on, it was time to go to work.

  “If by coming home you mean living with your mother again, then no, I won’t. You were right, Wataru. I’m never coming home.”

  The floor dropped out from beneath Wataru. He reeled. He had asked the question and gotten the answer he expected, and yet he wasn’t prepared for the crushing weight of it. Everything—his hope, his father’s answer, his soul—went spinning down into a deep, black abyss.

  “Remember what I said that night? I struggled with my decision a long time, but now that I’ve made it, I intend to see it through. I won’t be coming home. If there were the slightest chance of that, I wouldn’t have left in the first place. I know how hard this is, how deep it must have hurt you and your mother.”

  Then why?

  “You’re a smart kid, I should never have tried to talk around it. I should have told you straight from the very beginning. That was my mistake.” Akira continued talking, softly yet steadily. “I knew that no matter what I said you’d be sad, and maybe it was too early for you to even understand…That’s why I tried to leave without saying anything. I figured even if that made you hate or resent me, well, I would only be getting what I deserved. I was ready for that. I’m ready for it now. No matter how much you may hate me, Wataru, I won’t make excuses.”

  There was nothing Wataru could say. As always, his father was being totally logical.

  “Even if you came to hate me and say I wasn’t your dad, I would accept that. It’s what I deserve, I guess. But Wataru, know this: I will always be your father. That’s my responsibility, and, it’s the only thing I can offer you now.”

  Wataru’s brain went into a tailspin. He thought he had understood his father’s answer, but now the meaning of it had somehow slipped out of his grasp and was gone to who knows where. Maybe it had already hit the grou
nd, beating him to the final impact.

  He was still falling, and he was alone, plummeting down a lightless shaft, down, down, the wind whistling past his ears. Far above him, the shaft entrance grew smaller and smaller, and his father, standing at the edge, was already a tiny speck.

  “Of course I’ll pay for your education. And I’ll do what I can to help you and your mother meet expenses. Once I can talk to your mother more officially, I intend to do everything I can to make things easy for her. You can live in that apartment. That belongs to you and your mother now. Everything is taken care of.”

  Dad’s talking about money. Right. Money’s important.

  “Dad…so, you don’t like me and Mom anymore?”

  Akira shook his head. “That’s not it. The way I think about you and the way I think about her are two completely different things.”

  “Why? You’re my dad and my mom. We’re a family, aren’t we?”

  “Families are…a group of individuals, Wataru. They can live entirely different lives, and sometimes the paths they take lead away from each other.”

  “You’re living with another woman now, aren’t you? You like her more, right? That’s why you abandoned us, right?” Somewhere along the line, Wataru had gone from asking to accusing.

  Akira’s eyes grew larger behind the rimless glasses. His mouth gaped. “Who told you that?”

  “What does it matter who told me?”

  “It matters to me. It’s not something you should have to hear. It’s not something I wanted you to hear.”

  “But if it’s true, I want to know about it. I don’t like lies. You were the one who told me lying is bad, Dad!”

  Wataru’s voice had grown louder and louder as he talked. They were catching glances from the people on nearby benches. A young couple pushing a stroller nearby stopped in their tracks.

  Akira reached out a hand and affectionately stroked Wataru’s back. Don’t touch me. He had to clench both his hands into fists to stop himself from swatting away his father’s hand.

  “Lies are bad, that’s true,” Akira said in a low, husky voice. “But twisting the truth and not saying something that’s private are two different things. You should understand that. You do understand, don’t you? You’re a smart kid.”