In the autumn when Sakurai Momo was sixteen, the bushes by the railway tracks were covered in little red berries that glimmered softly in the evening light. Momo picked one and put it in her mouth. At the first bite, she spat it out. It was sour and astringent, with a strange bitterness. Yet the taste kept winding its way inward, until it reached her heart. It tasted exactly like how she felt. She stood on the lonely platform looking in the direction from which the train would come. She wore a white shirt, a dark blue denim skirt, purple canvas shoes, and a printed cotton scarf around her neck. The destination printed on her ticket was a city by the sea. She had never seen the ocean before, but she was hurrying toward it with the posture of someone going to meet love. Only what she was hurrying toward was not love at all. It was death. Yes, she meant to go there and end her life in a way that would be sorrowful, beautiful, clean, and solemn. The train was late. It did not come. A boy passed through the narrow gate and walked onto the platform. He wore a jacket the color of blue-black ink and gray trousers. On his back was a backpack, and in his hand he carried a black case. His expression was gentle. He smiled slightly at Sakurai Momo. She felt as though a shaft of sunlight had brushed her face. But once it entered her heart, that sunlight became a shadow. She kept herself from looking at him. Still, she could feel his gaze drifting around her. The boy remained silent. He did not speak. He did not even cough. At last the train arrived. Tickets for a small station like that were all unreserved, so once aboard you had to find your own place. The carriage was crowded, packed tight with people. Some laughed loudly, some slept, some children cried. There was only one empty seat. The boy gestured to Momo. You should sit. She thanked him and sat down. She thought he would go and look for a place in another carriage. But he did not. He stood beside her seat, and when he grew tired he took a newspaper from his bag, spread it on the floor, sat down, hugged his knees, and dozed. The train pushed on through an immense darkness, and most of the passengers had already fallen asleep. Momo thought that this was the last night of her life. By daybreak, the train should have reached the sea. When it stopped at some nameless station in the middle of the night, she got off. She wanted to look properly at what night looked like. The boy followed her down and stood with her in the dark. The train would stop for only five minutes. She spread both arms as if to embrace the darkness, then waved goodbye to it. The boy reached out, caught her hand, and led her back onto the train. Her hand was thin and cold. His was broad and burning hot.
Late in the night, Momo fell asleep. She began to dream. In her dream there were all kinds of brilliant landscapes and strange people. There was no real plot to it, no real story, only a feeling of brightness and ease, as if she were already dead and had gone to another world. When she woke, the train was passing through a tunnel, and wind came rushing in from the far end so fiercely that it was frighteningly cold. She fell asleep again, dreamed again, woke again. It happened several times. By the time the sky had turned pale, the train was moving through a mountain hollow. All over the mountains the shrubs flashed with bright color. At some point the person beside her had gotten off, and the boy was sitting there instead, curled up and sleeping soundly. He sensed her gaze and opened his eyes, smiling faintly. Then he quickly pulled out paper and pen, scribbled a few words, and showed them to her. Good morning. My name is Kamiya Itsuki. Momo stared. You can't speak? Itsuki nodded, then wrote again. My throat was damaged years ago. But I can hear. Where do you want to go? Momo said, "The last stop. The sea." Itsuki wrote, I will come with you. Momo froze. Then, with a sudden clang, the train came to a stop. Not long after, an announcement came over the speaker. There is a problem with the engine. Repairs are under way. Passengers are asked to wait patiently. Momo looked toward the mountain. There was a forest there, some leaves bright green, some gold, some vivid red, gleaming together like a rainbow from a distance. She decided to get off here. The journey would end here. She said to Itsuki, "I'm getting off. Goodbye." She stood, straightened her skirt, and stepped down from the train. Itsuki slung on his backpack, pulled the black case from beneath the seat, and followed. She started up the mountain. He followed her there too. She turned and said, "Don't keep following me. What if the train leaves without you?" Itsuki only smiled. By the time they reached the middle of the slope, the train had already crawled away with a rumble like a centipede. Momo looked at him, feeling guilty. But Itsuki only tightened his backpack, took her hand, and kept climbing. When they reached the top, they found, to their delight, a little river winding below the mountain, silver in the morning light, beautiful beyond words. On the summit there was a wide patch of grass, ringed with trees. They sat down. Itsuki opened the black case. Inside was a gleaming cello. He wrote, I was supposed to go there to perform, but now I only want to play for you. Will you listen? The music that rose from the strings was grand and radiant, like sunlight dancing through treetops, across water, through flowers. Life seemed to pour out of it with overwhelming force. For the time being, Momo forgot why she had boarded that train. Or perhaps, listening to the cello and watching the river, she simply forgot, for a little while, that she had wanted to die.
When the piece ended, Itsuki wrote, My mother died years ago. She killed herself. The afternoon she decided to do it, her eyes looked exactly the way yours did yesterday at dusk. Only back then I did not know that it was a sign that the sense of living was slowly fading away. If I had known sooner, I would not have lost her. Momo gave a start. Itsuki wrote again, I do not want to lose you. Sakurai Momo smiled faintly. "I'm nobody to you." Itsuki wrote, You are precious. From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were precious. Momo untied her scarf and bared her neck for him. "It's frightening, isn't it? Do you still think I'm precious now?" There was not a trace of horror or shock on Itsuki's face. He wrote, Sit down. Let me draw you a pencil sketch. Momo sat in the grass. Itsuki pulled out a sharpened pencil and began to draw rapidly on his memo pad. A moment later he showed it to her. In the drawing, a butterfly rested on the girl's neck. That had originally been a scar, a savage scar. He wrote, I think this is what makes you feel ashamed. But it really looks like a butterfly. It isn't ugly at all. If anything, it looks vividly alive. It was the first time anyone had ever praised it that way. Momo was so moved she could not speak. She thought back to the past. When she was eight, her parents had been in the middle of a violent quarrel. In her fury, her mother had flung a bowl of boiling porridge. It missed its mark and hit Momo's neck instead. The burn was severe, and it left a scar that never disappeared. To hide it, she wore a scarf in every season. Some malicious classmates called her the girl wrapped inside a scarf. Everyone knew there was a secret under it, though no one had actually seen it. Then she reached the age when she understood what love was, and she developed a secret crush on a boy in her class named Kashiwara. He had a bright, clean kind of grace, and a cheerful smile, like a tall poplar tree. She guarded that crush carefully, but it still got out. There was a girl in class named Amamiya who liked Kashiwara too, openly and without shame. Momo's feelings infuriated her. If there had been no scar on Momo's neck, she would have been a neat, beautiful girl, and to Amamiya that made her a threat. So one day during the break between exercises, Amamiya came over to her and said in feigned surprise, "Why do you always wear a scarf in weather this hot? Though it is a lovely scarf. Let me have a proper look." She yanked hard. The scarf slipped away. The scar ran from Momo's chin down to her collarbone, shocking in the sunlight. There was a collective intake of breath all around. With tears trembling in her eyes, Momo fled in humiliation and panic. Before she had even recovered from that disgrace, she accidentally overheard Kashiwara talking with Amamiya. Kashiwara said, "I don't like you." Amamiya said, "Then do you like Momo?" Kashiwara said, "Her? How could I? That scar nearly scared me to death. It's terrifying. Disgusting."
When she got that far, Momo said to Itsuki, "Can you imagine what that feels like? The person you like that much, the person you treat like a god in your heart, thinks you're frightening, ugly, even disgusting. The more ridiculous thing is that I really came to think of myself that way too." Wanting to end your life really could happen in the span of a single thought. It was almost noon. Smoke was rising in thin threads from the roofs of a few houses in the valley. If the train engine had not broken down, if she had not gotten off partway, then at that moment she might already have been soaking in the sea. Itsuki spread a newspaper on the grass and took food from his bag: bread, water, apples, and two packets of pickled mustard greens. As they ate, he suddenly pointed, excited, at a little sapling. Momo leaned over to look and asked, "What is that?" Itsuki wrote, A cherry tree. Momo said, "I love cherries most of all. But I've never seen a cherry tree before."
Itsuki dug and dug through his backpack until he came up with a knockoff Swiss Army knife. It had a tiny knife, little scissors, a small awl, and other things like that tucked inside. Using those tools, he began digging around the little cherry tree. He dug and dug until the blade snapped, the scissors came apart, and the awl dropped out. Then he used his hands. He clawed at the dirt until his nails tore and his fingers bled. At last he managed to dig up the little cherry tree whole, a great lump of damp earth still clinging to its roots. He wrapped it in newspaper, then, with hands smeared with dirt and blood, picked up his pencil and wrote, Take it back and plant it. When the cherries ripen, we'll share them together. Holding the tree in her arms, Momo said, "I don't want to die anymore. I want to eat cherries." Itsuki smiled. In the city where Momo and Itsuki lived, there was an old park with a small hill in it. They planted the little cherry tree there. Momo said, "In another two years it will be bigger. It will blossom and bear fruit. When that happens, we'll come together and pick cherries under it."
Itsuki's school and Momo's were very far apart, one at the southern end of the city and one at the northern. Momo was grateful to Itsuki, but she did not fall in love with him, and so she never went to his school to see him. As for Itsuki, every weekend he took two different buses, crossing most of the city just to visit her. If he had extra energy, he even made a detour to the park to see the cherry tree, water it, and feed it fertilizer. Momo no longer wore a scarf. No matter how cold the snowy days were, she did not wear one. She bared her neck to the sunlight, the sky, the earth, and to everyone, showing them the scar there. She no longer thought it ugly or frightening. Again and again, she imagined it was a butterfly on the verge of lifting its wings. Slowly, by touching it, feeling it, looking at it, she developed a strange confidence and pride. Yes, who else could be as unusual as she was? A butterfly resting on her neck. That confidence and pride gave her a singular glow, and it was that glow that moved Fujiwara Taku. On the schoolyard buried deep in snow, Fujiwara Taku walked toward Momo, leaving dark footprints behind him. He draped a rabbit-fur scarf around her neck and said, "I admire you, but I worry for the butterfly on your neck. It looks as though it's shivering from the cold." His voice was deep. Listening to him speak felt as warm as drinking a cup of steaming milk tea in front of a snowy window. In that voice, he spoke words of love to Sakurai Momo. He said, "I like you so much." He said, "No girl has ever made my heart move like this." He said, "Let me hold your hand." He said, "Either let me love you, or let me die."
Whenever he said those things, Momo only smiled with her head lowered and said nothing. But in the end she finally reached out and laid her hand in his palm. He closed his fingers around it. Just then, Kamiya Itsuki was walking toward them from a distance. He saw them. To turn and walk away, to pretend not to notice, to act as if it meant nothing, none of that was possible. He had no choice but to come forward, step by slow step, painfully, though spring had already come and it seemed as though his feet were still trapped deep in last winter's snow. He had crossed the city only to tell Momo that their cherry tree had bloomed, pale pink and beautiful. But the sort of words Fujiwara Taku said, he could neither speak nor write. It was not for any particular reason. It was simply that what he felt for Momo was not a blazing love like Fujiwara's, but another kind altogether, a quiet thing that wrapped itself around him thread by thread. Only he knew that. And yet he still came often to see Sakurai Momo. He wanted to see her. That was the truest wish of his every day.
That day, Momo ran alone to the park. She climbed the little hill and saw the blossoms. There were not many, only nine of them, thinly scattered among sparse green leaves, but they were astonishingly beautiful. Sadly, the flowers fell quickly, and not a single cherry formed. Then came cherry season. Every day Fujiwara Taku bought fresh cherries for Sakurai Momo. They were rosy and moist and sweet. Momo popped them into her mouth one after another, and as she ate she could not help wondering what the cherries from their own little tree would have tasted like if it had ever borne fruit. Itsuki never bought her a single cherry. There was one time when he bought two kilos of them, and even put them in a little bamboo basket. For beauty's sake he tucked two green leaves on top. With the feeling of bringing tribute, he went to Momo's school. But there he saw her walking with Fujiwara Taku, eating cherries as they went. Itsuki hesitated for a few seconds, then turned and walked back. As he walked he kept shoving cherries into his mouth. He finished the whole basket in one go. When he was done, he let out a cherry-scented belch and suddenly thought that there was no point in going on like this. Unless he could immediately seize Momo from Fujiwara Taku and make her his own girlfriend. But if he had that much nerve, he would never have needed to keep some vague promise about cherries. He would simply have said, I like you. Be my girlfriend. It was not only Itsuki who thought the whole thing pointless. Fujiwara Taku did too. He said to Itsuki, "You never let me know you liked her. Even when you came all the way to our school to see her, you never told me." Itsuki wrote, I never said I liked her. Fujiwara Taku said, "But you obviously do." Itsuki wrote, I cannot be your enemy. We are brothers. We have been brothers since kindergarten. Fujiwara Taku said, "I didn't say we had to be enemies. If we are going to be brothers forever, then we have to settle our love the way brothers do." Itsuki wrote, How? Fujiwara Taku said, "We'll play ball, the way we always did. Best of nine. If I win, I keep loving her. You are not to envy me, not to dwell on it, and not to go looking for Sakurai Momo in secret anymore. But if you win, then confess boldly and go straight ahead. I won't have a single thought left for Sakurai Momo." Stung by that, courage finally rose in Itsuki. He nodded. Before they began, the two brothers slapped hands on the bargain.
They played eight games. Four wins each. A tie. The atmosphere was fierce and tense. They decided to rest a little before the final game. But then a group of young men came over. Without so much as a word, they took the ping-pong table for themselves. Fujiwara Taku went over and said, "Sorry, we were here first. We haven't finished yet." One of the boys, a chain hanging from his neck, gave him a sidelong look and answered sharply, "What, you're saying we should wait until you've played your fill? Who do you think you are?" As he spoke, he shoved Fujiwara Taku. The moment Itsuki saw it, he sprang to his feet. But there were too many of them, and every one of them looked prickly as a hedgehog. He tugged at Fujiwara Taku, telling him to let it go. They had just turned away when one of the boys shouted after them, "Ha, I know that one. He's a mute!" Itsuki had heard things like that often enough and could bear it. Fujiwara Taku, however, only grew angrier. He spun around and threw a punch. The others crowded in at once, and the two sides were quickly grappling with each other. One of the boys suddenly pulled a knife and swung it at Fujiwara Taku. Without thinking, Itsuki reached out. The blade came down across his left hand. It sliced off part of his ring finger and part of his little finger. Blood burst out immediately, and just like that, Itsuki lost two pieces of his fingers. In ordinary life it did not change much. But he could never play the cello again. Without those fingers, how could he shape the strings? A cello was only a skill, after all. It didn't help anyone get into university. If I study hard and get into a good school, won't that amount to the same thing? Itsuki used those words to comfort Fujiwara Taku, who was eaten up with guilt. But Fujiwara could not be comforted. How was he supposed to repay a brother who had stepped forward for him like that? The first thing his brother needed was a voice. That he could not give him. And what came second was love. So he went to Sakurai Momo and said, "Kamiya Itsuki loves you. I don't love you. Everything I've done for you, he asked me to do in his place. Let's break up." Momo actually believed him. She knew nothing about the game behind it all. She asked what had happened to Itsuki's fingers, and Itsuki told her he'd cut them off while chopping vegetables. She believed that too. But she still did not start dating Itsuki. The reason was simple. The one she loved was Fujiwara Taku. Itsuki knew that, so he simply kept his distance from her. What was more, he had no voice with which to say words of love to the girl he loved, and now even the music he might have offered her was gone. Without voice, without cello, how could she ever hear his love? Yet no matter what happened, Fujiwara Taku refused to speak more than a few words to Sakurai Momo ever again. In that way he thanked his brother, and punished himself. In the end, though, he was deeply unhappy.
In truth, all three of them were unhappy. There was no method in the world that could make all three happy at once. But for Momo, no matter how unhappy she was, she would never again feel the weariness of life and the despair she had known in the autumn when she was sixteen. She had made the butterfly scar on her neck into a badge of individuality. Of course, if the raised unevenness of the scar could be smoothed away, it would look better. But that kind of surgery cost money, and for the moment she did not dare hope for it. As for Itsuki and Fujiwara Taku, though neither of them could be with the girl they loved, their brotherhood only deepened, and, unexpectedly, Itsuki got into a very good university. Youth, after all, is still youth. It flashes now and then with surprise and longing.
When Sakurai Momo was nineteen, she received a scholarship. She used the money to have surgery at a cosmetic clinic. After the operation, the scar no longer had those shocking raised ridges. Only a faint mark remained, like a butterfly printed on her skin in a soft pale pink. During the winter vacation after the surgery, Momo and Itsuki met on the seaside train. Momo wore no scarf. The butterfly on her neck was clean and plain to see. Itsuki stood beside her, greeted her, chatted with her. The train was crossing the Tama River, and he had the absurd feeling that the butterfly might spread its wings and fly straight down into the water. A rush of impulse flared up in him. He moved closer to her. He wanted to lower his head and kiss that butterfly. The train was crowded, packed so tightly there was scarcely room to breathe. Itsuki gripped the hanging strap with both hands and, standing in front of Momo, enclosed her in a small circle of space that no one else could press into. Inside that little circle Momo suddenly had the strange illusion that in this train, in this city, in the whole world, there was only Kamiya Itsuki and no one else. And that illusion answered, in some distant way, the memory of when she was sixteen. She felt Itsuki's impulse. She blushed, but she did not move away. And yet, in the end, Itsuki still did not kiss her. In the space of a single thought, the seaside train had already reached the opposite bank.
The years that followed passed in a rush. Sakurai Momo, Itsuki, and Fujiwara Taku all found new loves, and time spent in love was even more beautiful and even more hurried. Before they had properly tasted it, everyone had already graduated and gone to work. Momo followed love to Kyoto and began graduate school there. Perhaps she would never again return to the cherry tree that she and Itsuki had planted with their own hands, never again eat cherries with him beneath it. Fujiwara Taku fell in love with a tall girl who danced beautifully, and the two of them were sweet together. As for Itsuki, he was unlucky. He was dumped three times in a row. After the third heartbreak he finally understood a fact that had existed all along: all these years, he had always loved the girl with the butterfly on her neck. Yet because he had been timid and weak, forever hesitating, forever afraid, he had not even managed to tell her, I love you. It was such unbelievable stupidity that he almost deserved to fail at love. He was despondent beyond words. The gloom kept him awake. He counted sheep and stars until the middle of the night, and then at last remembered that one thing at least ought to have comforted him: his work. The next day was Monday. The department was choosing a new manager. His designs were distinctive, his colleagues all thought well of him, and even his superiors had spoken to him privately to praise him. Everything seemed to suggest that he had the best chance. Holding onto that hope, he drifted slowly into sleep. But at the meeting the next day, his boss said solemnly, "After comprehensive consideration, we have decided to promote so-and-so to manager of the sales department." That so-and-so was not Kamiya Itsuki. The last spark in his heart was snuffed out by a splash of cold water. When he got home, his father said, "Son, I'm getting married." Itsuki jolted. Then his father said, "There's something I want to give you. I think now, at last, you'll be able to understand it." It was a suicide note. His mother's suicide note. So the reason she had killed herself was not, as he had believed in childhood, because she had an incurable disease. It was because she had fallen in love with another man and had been trapped in pain she could not escape.
That pain, passing through yellowed paper and faded ink, crossed the years and struck him head-on. In the middle of the night, he went back to the old house where he had lived as a child. He climbed into the attic, pried up the floorboards by the window, and reached beneath them for a box. Inside it was a pistol, the same pistol his mother had used to kill herself. He could no longer remember what he had felt back then, when he hid the gun away after discovering her body. Now he took it out, wiped away the dust, and found there was still one bullet inside. He hid the pistol on his person and, though it was the middle of the night, went to the park and stood beneath the cherry tree.
He began to dig. Under the dim moonlight, he had come prepared this time. It was nothing like the day he had dug up the little cherry sapling with a fake Swiss Army knife and his bare hands. This time he had brought a hoe. He dug and dug, and in the end he still had to use his hands to scoop the earth out of the pit. By dawn he had made a hole just large enough to lie down in, so he lay inside it. He did not close his eyes right away. Holding the pistol, he looked up at the cherry tree. Sunlight spilled down from the sky and struck its branches. It was now full and leafy, and among the leaves hung cherries, plump, red, and shining with juice. How many years had it been since he had last eaten cherries? After that evening when he had swallowed a whole basket by himself, he had never touched one again. This was the tree he had planted with his own hands, a tree planted for love. Now at last it had borne fruit. Even if the person from those days was no longer here, he had to taste it. He climbed the tree, picked the biggest and reddest cherry, and put it into his dry mouth. Instantly sweet juice flooded his lips and teeth. The feeling was extraordinary. He ate one after another. The sunlight grew warmer. The city woke within it. Beyond the park was a school, and from the tree he could see the school gate. Groups of children came toward it with smiling faces and schoolbags on their backs, the sunlight shining on them as if they were angels. Itsuki had eaten his fill. He let out a cherry-scented belch. Then he climbed down, jumped back into the pit, picked up the pistol, glanced at it once, and set it back down. With both hands he began scooping earth, returning to the pit all the dirt he had taken out, burying the gun beneath it. He wanted to bury it as one buries a dead self. Once the gun was buried, he walked down the slope and out of the park. Just outside the gate, beneath a cherry tree, a girl out for a morning run had stopped. She wore a pale violet tracksuit, and in her hair was a butterfly clip. She stopped running and smiled at him. In that instant he felt something like the first time he had ever heard beauty come from the strings beneath his own hand. Breathing in the fresh air of the clean morning, he walked steadily toward her. Sunlight poured down. It was beautiful beyond words.