It’s such a skillful speech that it’s almost overbearing. It leaves me cold—this campaign address sounds like it belongs on TV, not in a parking lot surrounded by fields. The whispers I hear from the crowd—“You know it’s gonna be Miyamizu again this term anyway,” “It sounds like he’s been spreadin’ lots of cash around”—make my mood even darker.
“Hey, Miyamizu.”
“…Mornin’.”
Wonderful. The greeting comes from three classmates I’m less than fond of. Even in high school, they’re part of the flashy “in-crowd,” and they snark at us—the “drones”—over every little thing.
“The mayor and the contractor,” one of them says, shooting a deliberate glance at my orating father. When I follow suit, I see Tesshi’s dad standing next to mine, beaming. He’s wearing a jacket from his construction company and an armband that says Toshiki Miyamizu Supporter.
The guy looks back at me, then at Tesshi, and continues. “Their kids are all buddy-buddy, too. Did your folks tell you to hang out together?”
This is so stupid. I don’t even answer—I walk faster, trying to get out of there. Tesshi’s expressionless. Only Saya looks bothered and a bit flustered.
“Mitsuha!”
Suddenly, a loud voice booms out. Yeep! My breath catches in my throat. I don’t believe this. My dad lowered his mic midspeech to shout at me without the aid of electronic amplification. The whole crowd turns to look at me.
“Mitsuha, straighten up!”
I turn beet red. It’s so unfair that I almost start crying. I want to run, but I desperately fight back the urge and stride away instead.
The crowd is whispering. “He’s even tough on family.”
“That’s the mayor for you.”
I hear my classmates snickering. “Ooh. Harsh.”
“I kinda feel a little sorry for her.”
This could not be worse.
The background music that was playing in my head a minute ago has disappeared, and I remember that this town, without a soundtrack, is an absolutely suffocating place.
With a sharp tak, tak, tak, the teacher writes a short poem on the blackboard.
Please don’t ask me “Who goes there?” I’m waiting here for my love, in the September dew.
“Tasokare, ‘who goes there?’ This is the origin of the term tasogare, or twilight. You know the word twilight, don’t you?”
Speaking in a clear voice, our teacher, Miss Yuki, writes Tasokare in big letters on the blackboard.
“It’s evening, not quite day or night. It’s a window when outlines blur, making it hard to tell who people are. When you might meet something that isn’t human. It’s a time when people encounter demons or the dead, and it has another name that reflects this. They say, though, that even before that, it had other names.”
Miss Yuki writes the two terms on the board, but it looks like she’s just shuffling around the same letters.
“’Scuse me, teacher! Question! What about half-light?”
Somebody speaks up, and I think, Yeah, that’s right. I know twilight, of course, but the word I’ve heard people use to mean evening ever since I was little is half-light. When Miss Yuki hears this, she smiles gently. You know, our classics teacher is much too pretty to be teaching at a country high school like this.
“I expect that’s local dialect, isn’t it? I hear the elderly people in Itomori still use ancient Japanese words here and there.”
“’Cause this here’s the sticks,” proclaims one of the boys, and people start giggling. He’s not wrong. Sometimes Gran uses words that make me want to ask her what language she’s speaking. Some of her expressions were abandoned by most of the rest of Japan a couple of centuries back. Idly pondering, I flip through my notebook, and then—on a page that should be blank—I see something written in big letters:
Who are you?
…Huh?
What is this? The sounds around me fade and grow distant, as if being absorbed by the unfamiliar handwriting. That’s not mine. I haven’t lent my notebook to anybody, either. What? “Who am I?” What’s that supposed to mean?
“…zu. You’re next, Miss Miyamizu!”
“Oh! Yes’m!” I stand up hastily.
“Begin reading on page ninety-eight, please,” Miss Yuki tells me. Scrutinizing my face, she adds, sounding amused, “Good to see that you remember your name today, Miss Miyamizu.”
At that, the whole class bursts out laughing. Excuse me? Seriously, what is going on?!
“You don’t remember?”
“…No.”
“For real?”
“Yes, for real,” I answer, taking a sip of banana juice. Gulp. Yum. Saya’s looking at me as if I’m some inanimate oddity.
“…No, listen. Yesterday, you forgot where your desk and your locker were. Your hair was all mussed and cowlicky, and you hadn’t tied it back. You didn’t wear your uniform ribbon, and you were crabby the whole time.”
I try visualizing what that must’ve looked like…… What?
“What?! No way, are you serious?!”
“Yeah, you acted like you had amnesia or somethin’ yesterday.”
Flustered, I try to think back… Something really is off here. I can’t remember yesterday. Or, no—I do remember little bits and pieces.
There was…an unfamiliar town somewhere?
A reflection in a mirror…a boy?
I try to retrace my memories. Piihyororooo. In the distance, a kite mocks me. It’s lunchtime, and we’re chatting in a corner of the schoolyard, juice boxes in hand.
“Umm… It feels like I spent the whole day in this weird dream. Like…a dream about somebody else’s life? …Mm, I can’t remember much of it…”
“I got it!”
Tesshi shouts all of a sudden, and I jump. He snatches up his half-read issue of the occult magazine MU and shoves it under our noses, spit flying enthusiastically.
“Memories of your past life! That’s what that is! Yeah, I know you’re gonna say that ain’t scientific, but if you put it another way and say your unconscious mind got linked up with a multiverse based on Everett’s many-worlds interpretation—”
“You shut your piehole,” Saya scolds him sharply.
“Hey! Were you the one who scribbled in my notebook?!” I erupt at almost the same time.
“Huh? Scribbled?”
Oh, I guess not. Tesshi’s not the type to pull a lame prank like that, and he didn’t have a motive, either.
“Um, nothin’. Never mind,” I say, backing down.
“Say what? Whaddaya mean, ‘scribbled’? Am I a suspect for somethin’?”
“I told you, forget it.”
“Whoa, Mitsuha, you’re so mean! Did you hear that, Saya? I’ve been falsely accused! Framed! Call a prosecutor, gimme a prosecutor! Or wait, maybe that’s a lawyer. Hey, which one are you supposed to get for stuff like this?”
“Anyway, Mitsuha, you really were kinda funny yesterday,” Saya says, grandly ignoring Tesshi’s complaints. “Were you feelin’ sick?”
“Hmm… That’s so weird. Maybe I really am stressed…”
I think back on all the accounts I’ve gotten so far.
Tesshi’s already absorbed in his magazine again, as if nothing ever happened. That’s one of his virtues, the way he just lets stuff go.
“That’s gotta be it! You’ve had all kinds of stress lately!”
She’s right. Even setting aside the election, that ritual’s tonight! Why, oh why, in this tiny little town, do I have to have a father who’s the mayor and a grandmother who’s the chief Shinto priestess at the shrine? I bury my face in my knees and heave a deep, deep sigh.
“Aaagh… I wanna hurry up and graduate and go to Tokyo. This town is too cramped and too tight!”
Saya’s nodding along: I know. I totally, totally get it! “My mom and my sisters have all been in charge of the town broadcasts, one after another. Ever since I was tiny, the neighborhood ladies have called me ‘the little broadcast girl,’ you know?! And n
ow I’m in the broadcastin’ club for some reason! Even I don’t know what I want to do anymore!”
“Saya, once we graduate, let’s get out and go to Tokyo together! Even when we’re grown up, in this town, we’ll still be stuck with the school hierarchy! We’ll never be free of these moldy old traditions! C’mon, Tesshi, you’re comin’ with us, right?”
“Hmm?” Absently, Tesshi looks up from his magazine.
“…Were you even listenin’?”
“Mm. I don’t really, uh… I think I’ll just live here for the rest of my life.”
HAAAAAAAAH. Saya and I sigh again. This is why he isn’t popular with girls… Although it’s not like I’ve ever had a boyfriend myself.
The wind whispers gently. When I turn to look after it, there’s Itomori Lake below us: placid, calm, and completely disinterested.
This town doesn’t have a bookstore or a dentist. There’s one train every two hours, buses come through only twice each day, we don’t get weather reports for our area, and we’re still a mosaic on the Google Maps satellite photos. The convenience store closes at nine, and it sells things like vegetable seeds and high-grade farming equipment.
On the way home from school, Saya and I are still in “griping about Itomori” mode.
There are no big chains like McDonald’s or MOS Burger, but we have two sleazy “snack bars.” There’s no work, no girls come here to find husbands, and the daylight hours are short. Gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe. Most of the time, we actually find the town’s sparse population refreshing. We’re almost proud of it, but today we despair in earnest.
Tesshi’s been pushing his bike along after us, off in his own world, and he irritably cuts into the conversation.
“Geez, y’all!”
“What?” we ask crossly, and Tesshi gives a creepy grin.
“Forget about all that stuff. Wanna stop at the café?”
“Huh…?”
“Wha…?”
“Wha…?!”
“A café?!” we chorus in perfect unison.
A metallic kachonk! melts into the calls of the evening cicadas. “Here.” Tesshi holds out the cans of juice from the vending machine. With a motorized whine, an old man riding his electric scooter home from the fields crosses in front of us, and a passing stray dog sits down and yawns as if to say, Yeah, why not? I’ll keep you company.
The “café” wasn’t exactly what springs to mind. It wasn’t Starbucks or Tully’s or one of those fantastic, fabled spaces that serves pancakes and bagels and gelato. It was just a neighborhood bus stop out in the middle of nowhere with a vending machine and a bench with an ice-cream sign from about thirty years ago plastered to it. The three of us sit side by side on the bench, sipping our juice, while the dog rests at our feet. We don’t feel like Tesshi tricked us. It’s more like, Well, sure. What else would it be?
“Okay, I’m headin’ home.”
I bid my farewells to the two of them after participating in an exchange I could not have cared less about—“I think it’s about a degree cooler than it was yesterday.” “No, I think it’s a degree warmer”—that lasted as long as it took to finish a can of juice.
“Good luck tonight,” says Saya.
“We’ll come by and watch later,” promises Tesshi.
“You seriously don’t have to! Actually, don’t you dare!” I warn them, but inside, I’m sending a prayer in their direction. Do your best to turn into an actual couple, you two! After climbing the stone steps for a while, I turn back, looking at the pair of them as they sit on the bench with the sunset-colored lake in the background, and I softly layer a lyrical piano melody over the scene. Mm-hmm, y’all really do look good together. Tonight, I must perform my awful duty, but I hope you can enjoy your youth.
“Awww, I wanna do it, too,” Yotsuha grumbles.
“It’s too soon for you yet, Yotsuha,” hushes Gran.
The constant click of spherical weights knocking together echoes in a workroom big enough for only about eight tatami mats. “Listen to the voice of the thread,” Gran tells her. Even as she speaks, her hands don’t pause in their work. “If you keep windin’ threads that way, before long, emotions will start runnin’ between you and the thread.”
“Huh? But thread doesn’t talk.”
“Our braided cords—,” Gran continues, ignoring Yotsuha’s objection. All three of us are wearing kimonos, and we’re finishing up the cords that we’ll use in tonight’s ceremony.
Braided cords are made of thin threads plaited together into a single rope. It’s a traditional folk art that’s been handed down for a very long time. The finished cords are cute and colorful, with all sorts of designs braided into them. That said, the work takes quite a bit of skill, so Gran’s making Yotsuha’s for her. Yotsuha’s spending the time doing assistant work, winding thread around the ball-weights.
“Our braided cords hold a thousand years of Itomori’s history. I tell you, that school of yours really should put priority on teachin’ this sort of town history to you children. Listen, two hundred years ago…”
Here we go again, I think with a wry little smile. It’s Gran’s favorite speech, and I’ve heard it over and over in this workroom, ever since I was small.
“A fire began in the bathroom of Mayugorou Yamazaki, the straw sandal–maker, and it burned up this whole area, including the shrine and all the old records. It was what people call—”
Gran glances at me.
“‘The Great Mayugorou Fire,’” I answer smoothly.
Mm-hmm. Gran nods, looking satisfied.
“What? They named the fire after him?!” Yotsuha exclaims, startled. “Poor Mr. Mayugorou,” she mutters. “Havin’ his name stick around ’cause of somethin’ like that.”
“Thanks to that fire, we don’t know what our dances or the patterns in our cords mean anymore. All we have left are the forms. Still, even not knowin’, we mustn’t ever let the forms disappear. The meanin’ in those shapes is bound to resurface someday.”
Gran’s words have a unique rhythm to them, like a traditional ballad, and as I braid my cord, I mouth the words along with her, silently reciting them from memory. The meanin’ in those shapes is bound to resurface someday. Here, at Miyamizu Shrine—
“Here, at Miyamizu Shrine, that’s our solemn duty. And yet…”
At that point, Gran lowers her mild eyes, sadly.
“And yet, that foolish son of mine… As if abandonin’ the priesthood and leavin’ this house weren’t enough, he had to become a politician…”
Gran sighs, and I sneak a small sigh of my own underneath it. Even I don’t really know whether I love this town or hate it, whether I want to go somewhere far away or stay with my family and friends forever. When I remove my finished, brightly colored cord from the round stand, it makes a soft, lonely click.
I think the sound of the wooden Japanese flute that drifts from the shrine in the darkness would probably terrify city folks. It sets the mood for some sinister event, like in an old murder mystery novel. For a little while now, I’ve been performing a ceremonial shrine maiden dance, feeling gloomy enough that I wish a killer like Jason or Jack the Ripper—anybody really—would just put me out of my misery.
This time every year, the Miyamizu Shrine holds its harvest festival, and Yotsuha and I have the misfortune of being the stars of the show. On this day, we wear crisp shrine maiden outfits, paint on bright-red lip rouge and wear jingly hair ornaments, go out in front of the standing audience at the kagura hall, and dance the dance Gran taught us. It’s one of the traditions whose meaning was lost in the fire, and it’s performed by two people, moving in sync. We’re both holding bells with colorful cords tied to them. We ring them, twirling around and around, making the cords flare out and trail behind us. During my last spin, I spotted Tesshi and Saya out of the corner of my eye and got even more depressed. Those little— I told them and told them not to come, and they’re still here?! I’ll hex them with my shrine maiden power! I’ll text them tons of curse
stamps with Line! That said, the dance isn’t the part I hate. Sure, it’s a little embarrassing, but since I’ve been doing it since I was little, I’m completely used to it. No, it’s not this. It’s that one ritual. The one that’s more embarrassing the older I get. That thing I have to do right after this. The part that seems intentionally designed to brutally humiliate women.
Oh, for the love of—
I don’t wanna!
Plagued by these thoughts, I move my body, and then all of a sudden, the dance ends. Agh. Here it comes.
Munch, munch, munch.
Munch.
Munch, munch, munch, munch.
I’m intently chewing rice. I shut my eyes and keep chewing, trying not to think, trying not to sense flavor or sound or color. Beside me, Yotsuha’s doing the exact same thing. We’re kneeling formally, side by side, and a small wooden box rests on a stand in front of each of us. And of course, beyond that, a diverse audience of all ages and genders stares at us.
Munch, munch, munch.
Munch, munch.
Agh, I swear…
Munch, munch, munch.
I’m going to have to do it soon.
Munch, munch.
Arrrgh.
Munch.
Giving up, I raise the box in front of me. I bring it close to my lips, attempting to veil my mouth with the sleeve of my kimono.
And then. Aaagh.
Puckering my lips, I spit the rice I’ve been chewing into the box. The mixture of grain and saliva dribbles from my mouth as a thick, white liquid. I feel as if I’ve heard the crowd stir, muttering. Waaaaaaaaah! I sob internally. Please, nobody look at me.
Mouth-brewed sake.
It’s the oldest type of sake in Japan. If you chew up rice, mixing it with saliva, then just let it sit, it ferments and turns into alcohol. Then it’s offered to the gods. Long ago, I hear places all over the country used to make it, but I don’t know if any other shrines still do this sort of thing now, in the twenty-first century… And seriously, doing it in shrine maiden clothes is just over the top! I mean, what’s the point?! Mentally sniffling, I pick up another pinch of rice and put it in my mouth like a trooper. Then I chew again. Yotsuha is doing the exact same thing, her expression cool and composed. We have to do this over and over until the tiny boxes are full. Dribble… I spit saliva and rice again. Inside, I’m crying my eyes out.