Kitagawa Fuji, you knew this already: I was a climbing vine. Once I took root somewhere, I would spread with fierce determination until green covered everything. But the place where I arrogantly chose to take root that year was your heart. I used up all my strength pitching camp there, hacking my way forward, only to learn that I still could not wait long enough for spring to reach the vine. It was just like that song one of my favorite audition-show girls used to sing: when love goes out, the lights go out, and the heart walls itself into a city. I was the sort of person who could never find a way out. I was devout in it, and terribly sincere.
In the year Matsumoto Nishiki came with her mother to the little town of Nanseicho, she met Kitagawa Fuji in late August. She was standing on the second-floor windowsill of the teachers' family building, wiping at the old glass. The campus during summer break was so quiet it felt abandoned. Noon sunlight stretched from above her head to her arms, and everything shimmered with harsh heat and fine beads of sweat. The stubborn grime on the old pane gradually made her irritable. At last, when she had lost patience with one patch of grease she simply could not clean, she flung the rag straight downstairs. Then she heard a sharp boy's voice rise up. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Startled, she bent over and looked down. A tall, lean boy stood there under the sun with a basketball in his arms, furious, his face lifted toward her and twisted with anger. Something flashed and dazzled Nishiki's eyes for a second: the crystal stud in his nose. Only then did she really take in the rest of him. Even in that crushing heat he was wearing a baseball cap. He had on a white sleeveless shirt, and across the bare skin of his arm ran a long, abrupt scar. Nishiki's mind produced its verdict instantly. Delinquent. She had not expected to provoke a boy like that on her very first day in Nanseicho. She had not even had time to speak when, as if the whole thing were a joke to him, he hurled the basketball at her. With a crash, the window next to her shattered. He frowned, watching her face slowly redden. Nishiki glanced at the rag beneath his foot and at the basketball still rebounding on the ground. In the end she did nothing but glare at him coolly and turn away from the window. She leaned against the wall beside it, listening until the sounds below gradually disappeared. The building was empty now. Her mother had gone out to buy daily necessities, and she was the only person left inside. She had no intention at all of becoming entangled with a boy who looked so recklessly wild. Then a voice came from the window. "So you're not going to apologize?" The heart she had only just managed to steady began to pound violently again. That voice was unmistakably the same one from downstairs. She thought for a moment she must have imagined it, but when she looked up there he was, that same impossible hoodlum, leaning in through the window with a grin full of mischief. "Well? What are you going to do about it?" Her hand went into the pocket of her cotton skirt. In her panic, even her eyelids started to twitch. "Marry me to make amends," he said. His fingers rested on the glass as his bright eyes fixed on her embarrassed face. Fine beads of sweat rolled down Nishiki's forehead. She had always grown up in quietness. The boys around her had always been gentle and clean. Never had she met anyone so shameless, so brazen, so ready to run wild with a single hint of encouragement. In her fluster, tears actually welled up in her eyes, and her voice dropped until all she could do was stammer, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He let out a cheerful whistle and laughed out loud. "You're easy to tease. Let's be friends. I'm Kitagawa Fuji." She looked up at him in confusion. He was looking at her with that handsome face full of teasing light, and the scene felt less like a first meeting than like old friends picking up an afternoon conversation. Yet one minute earlier, Matsumoto Nishiki had cursed him to death a thousand times in her heart.
At last Nishiki settled into life in that strange town. When she was alone, she would often carry a book of poems along the second-floor corridor and pace back and forth reading aloud to herself. Days melted that way into October. After the school's annual culture festival performance, the holiday break arrived and the campus grew empty again. Though it was already October, the inland town was still hot. Nishiki found herself a quiet place to cool off: the football field behind the school avenue. Night spread slowly over the field. She sat high in the stands while ring after ring of darkness sank down and the wind turned cool. Delighted, she lay back, only to notice a tall, thin figure in the distance walking slowly across the pitch. It was a young man, not a teacher left behind at school, and not some idle drifter either. Curious, she watched him vanish beyond the field and head toward the teaching building that should have been deserted. She could not resist following. When she reached the corridor, she saw a girl with long hair standing with the light behind her, and facing her was none other than Kitagawa Fuji, the arrogant boy who had teased her that first day. At sixteen or seventeen, a scene like that was not unusual, and Nishiki was about to turn away. She had no taste for eavesdropping. But just as she did, Fuji began to speak, and his voice was utterly different from the insolent one she knew. It was pleading, almost humble. "Minami, can't you give me one more chance?" The girl called Hayama Minami answered with chill in every word. "Kitagawa Fuji, if I were you, I would never cling like this. How could I ever like a man like you?" Nishiki felt cold sweat break out all over. So this was just one-sided love on Fuji's part. She heard him call her name again, low and unwilling: "Hayama Minami..." Hidden at the end of the corridor, Nishiki watched Minami walk away with her back so straight it seemed made of pride itself. It was the posture of someone who did not love. When Nishiki turned back to Fuji, he was driving his fist into the wall. She heard the dull thud of it. He stood there stiff and motionless for a long time in the deepening night before finally turning away. In the dim light she watched him go, his head slightly bowed. She had seen him unreasonable and triumphant, she had seen him angry, but seeing him like that, so withered, so broken, filled her with a strange sorrow. She walked over to the corner where he had punched the wall and saw the faint smear of blood left there. Wind came whistling through, and suddenly something inside her collapsed. A dull ache opened in her heart so completely that it made no sound at all. That flamboyant Kitagawa Fuji, that boy who had smashed her window to pieces, was in the end only a young man suffering from love he could not have. And he loved with such blazing desperation that it seemed to tear his insides apart.
By Christmas Eve, Matsumoto Nishiki had become properly friendly with her classmates. In late December the town turned sharply cold, and a group of them secretly arranged to go drinking at an izakaya so they could spend an unusual Christmas together. That day the whole city rang with the cheer of bells. From the street to the tavern there were crowds drunk on celebration. Nishiki had not expected to see Kitagawa Fuji there. He sat in a corner dressed in a black sweater, his face cold, slamming a glass down so hard that the beer foam rose from its rim like clouds. A classmate followed her gaze and said, "That is Kitagawa Fuji. He's a legend at the high school next door. Rotten right down to the bone, but brilliant in a way ordinary people aren't. And stubborn in the same way. You know Hayama Minami, the school beauty? Fuji's been chasing her for a whole year." So the girl she had seen in the corridor had really been the school beauty. Nishiki watched Fuji empty one glass and then another. He drank the way people drank only if they meant to get drunk. Before eleven, he was thoroughly plastered. He staggered to his feet, raised his glass at everyone around him, and shouted, "Come on, let's all wish Hayama Minami every blessing under heaven!" Someone at Nishiki's table laughed and pointed at him as if he were a clown. "In this world, only Hayama Minami could make Kitagawa Fuji look that pathetic." Nishiki could not laugh. At last he lurched over to her table. Seeing her, he froze for a second. "A girl like you shouldn't be in a place like this." Nishiki said nothing. She lifted her own untouched beer and poured it all straight down her throat. Fuji clapped and shouted his approval. "Not bad at all. Women can hold their liquor too. Come on, drink with me." One by one the others surrendered. Only Nishiki remained clear-headed. At midnight, the clock in the square outside began to toll dully. Fuji roused himself, fumbled a phone out of his pocket with shaking fingers, and dialed the same eleven digits. Somehow he must have hit speakerphone by mistake, because Nishiki heard the cold voice of a girl on the other end. "Kitagawa Fuji, stop bothering me." Fuji's own voice trembled violently. "Minami, Merry Christmas Eve. But how can you reject me? Besides me, who else in this world can ever have a happy ending with you?" Hayama Minami hung up. Buoyed by drink, Kitagawa Fuji broke down before the dead tone. Nishiki felt as if she were watching some melodramatic serial at the point where it had suddenly become moving, and tears spilled from her eyes in heavy drops. She grabbed hold of Fuji's hand and said, in a voice light as sea wind, "Come on. Let's go home." On the square outside, fireworks were bursting overhead while drunk voices all around them sang and shouted. Fuji's body sagged against her like a mountain. She could barely hold him up, and the two of them stumbled and fell onto the pavement together while the crowd around them laughed kindly. He buried himself against her as if he were a child, clutching her hand and slurring Minami's name again and again. "Minami, Minami... from the moment I met you a year ago, I started to like you." Nishiki stayed by his side all night. He slept a long, heavy sleep. When he woke the next morning, she only gave him a bright smile and said nothing at all about the way he had disgraced himself. He, on the other hand, pressed a hand to his aching temple and said, "Sorry. I put you through a lot last night. Was I awful to look at?" Nishiki nodded, then shook her head. Fuji frowned impatiently. "You're terrible at lying." Then he stood up and stretched his sore limbs. "But I'm the sort who never dies no matter how hard you hit me. Believe it or not, one day I'll move Hayama Minami." This time Nishiki shook her head first, then nodded. Watching her flustered little expression, Fuji burst out laughing, ran over, took her hand, and said, "Come on, I'll take you home. A good girl from a proper family spending the whole night out with a delinquent like me, you'll get yourself into trouble." It was the first time Nishiki had ever been led by the hand by a boy. His palm burned hot against hers, as fierce as the August sunlight on the day they met.
After Christmas, Nishiki stopped seeing Kitagawa Fuji. But she often ran into Hayama Minami, crossing the campus with an armful of heavy books, dressed in a white sweater and blue school skirt, delicate to the point of perfection. It was no wonder so many boys lost themselves over her. Then, in January, a great snowstorm came. In a single night the whole world turned white. Nishiki hated the cold and had buried herself under the blankets early. Near midnight she suddenly woke from a dream. She had dreamed that Kitagawa Fuji was calling her. The light from her phone beside the pillow was cold and real. The ringtone was real too. It was not a dream. On the line was Fuji's voice, threaded with pleading and something like command. "Matsumoto Nishiki, if you don't come, I'm really going to drink myself to death." And then there was only the busy tone. When she called back, his phone had already been turned off. She lost all hope of sleep. Outside, the north wind roared. The snow, already beginning to melt, had frozen hard again in the sharp drop in temperature. In the end she climbed out of bed, threw on the down jacket lying by her pillow, crept out of the family building, and headed for the tavern. The streets were empty. Snowflakes drifted down, and the road shone smooth with ice. She walked carefully, but still slipped and fell hard, and soon her pajama trousers were soaked through. The cold climbed mercilessly up her legs. At last she began to cry, scolding herself all the while. You know perfectly well that another person lives in his heart, and still you cannot stop. Even so, she found him at the izakaya. When he waved her over and made room for her, looking at the traces of melted snow on her coat, he slapped her shoulder hard and laughed. "Matsumoto Nishiki, you really are loyal. All my brothers said it was too cold to bother with me." She had only just sat down when the sweat from her hurried run turned into bone-deep cold. She tucked her hands into her sleeves and still smiled. "I'm your friend. I'm your friend." What a cutting five words that was. At last she understood why people said some things caught in the throat and could not be spoken out. They stayed there until one in the morning, when the tavern was finally closing. This time Fuji was not drunk, only lightly tipsy. When they stepped outside, Nishiki remembered that she had forgotten her phone on the table and turned back for it, only to run into a group of drunk boys heading for the door. One of them grabbed her hand. Before she even saw his face clearly, Kitagawa Fuji, who had been waiting for her by the entrance, shot forward and started throwing punches. The fists came down like rain. The crowd twisted into a knot, and little by little Fuji was overwhelmed. Nishiki covered her mouth and watched him boxed in. The whole world shrank to noise and the sick pain in her own heart. Then she grabbed a bottle from the corner of the tavern and smashed it down. The boys froze in disbelief and stared at her. Holding the broken half of the bottle like a trapped animal, she shouted, "I'm calling the police." At last they scattered. She ran over and threw her arms around Fuji, who had collapsed to the ground. "You knew perfectly well you couldn't beat them. Why do you have to fight the world head-on? Kitagawa Fuji, have you drunk your brains away?" He winced and laughed through the pain. "I'm a hoodlum. I grew up fighting. Did you forget what I told you when I teased you that first day? I said you had to marry me. If those idiots touch you, they touch me. I can't exactly wear a green hat." Seeing the stunned look in her eyes, he stopped laughing. Gripping the hand that held him, he said with sudden seriousness, "Because I can't stand seeing other people bully you. Because you're good to me, I have to be good to you with everything I've got." She laughed through her tears, and the tears still kept rolling down, falling onto the wounds on his face. "Kitagawa Fuji, why do you keep fighting yourself? There are other women in this world besides Hayama Minami." He stood up, took her hand again, and said in that same hard voice, "I'll walk you back." All the way home he never let go. The two of them, both a mess, heads tucked down in the freezing night, looked like a pair of fugitives from some old Hong Kong film.
After Nishiki came back from the tavern, she ran a high fever. Later, the inflammation in her throat grew so bad she lost her voice. By the time Kitagawa Fuji came to see her, she had recovered enough to speak again. She gave him an apologetic smile. "I'm just a clay doll that crumbles if you squeeze it too hard." Looking at her pale, bloodless face and the weak smile at her lips, he suddenly felt afraid. What if he really lost her? The answer rose in his heart before he could stop it. He pulled her fiercely into his arms. "Idiot. That night you came looking for me and the hems of your pants were soaked. You must have been freezing." She looked at the bruises on his face that had not yet healed and touched them gently. "Did it hurt?" Fuji shook his head. "Matsumoto Nishiki, once you're better, I'll show you every corner of this town." And he did. On the weekends after she recovered, he would wait for her on the school field and take her into the city to eat, or out to the countryside to see the scenery. Her fingers curled inside the warmth of his hand, and that warmth covered her like sky. At the end of March, her mother was transferred back to her old school, but Nishiki still stubbornly stayed in Nanseicho for one reason only: Kitagawa Fuji was there. In late April, Fuji suddenly took her to the square where he had once gotten drunk, slipped a delicate ring onto her finger, and said, "Matsumoto Nishiki, let's be together." She did not say much, but joy filled her heart so completely that the slightest touch might have made it spill over. It was only a month later that she learned Hayama Minami already had a boyfriend, a gifted art student from the neighboring city whom she had met at a performance in April. Everyone said Minami was a fairylike beauty. She had danced a flamenco in a short golden skirt, and the blaze of her body had captivated him at once. That night, while washing her hair, Nishiki's ring snagged in it. She gritted her teeth and tore away a strand. In cleaning the ring, she cut her hand badly. Looking at it, she could not stop thinking that Minami had taken a boyfriend in April and Fuji had given her a ring in April too. Again and again she told herself it might only be coincidence. When he had put the ring on her finger, he had looked so serious. After that, Kitagawa Fuji never mentioned Hayama Minami again. He stopped drinking himself into ruin. Almost overnight he became calm. In his spare time he carried an easel on his back and took Nishiki out to sketch in the countryside. He studied seriously, and he told her that once the two of them got into universities in Kanto, that would be their whole life decided. Nishiki loved the way Kitagawa Fuji spoke of a lifetime with such gravity, as though forever had already been settled beyond doubt.
Time rushed on until October again and Nishiki's seventeenth birthday arrived. Her friends arranged a celebration for her, dinner first and karaoke after. While everyone was chatting, someone brought up Hayama Minami and remarked, half gleeful, that such a clever girl had schemed over everything and still ended up being thrown over in the end. Only then did Nishiki learn that Minami's gifted boyfriend had chosen a future overseas over love without a moment's hesitation. Her friends saw her face darken at once and, half joking, proposed that Kitagawa Fuji should make her a promise in front of everyone that night. Nishiki had curled her hair for the occasion and dressed herself as prettily as she could. By eight o'clock the dinner had already begun, but Fuji still had not arrived. Smiling, she told everyone to start without him, while the fear inside her mounted until it almost crushed her. In the middle of the meal she slipped away to the restroom and called him. His voice on the other end was hurried. "Happy birthday, Matsumoto Nishiki. A friend of mine is in trouble. I can't get away. I'll make it up to you next time." He hung up before she could answer. The next morning, Hayama Minami came to find Nishiki in the crowded corridor and said, with everyone listening, "Matsumoto Nishiki, let Kitagawa Fuji go." Nishiki had imagined giving up before. But hearing it spoken aloud by Minami filled her with sudden rage. "Fine, Hayama Minami. But let Kitagawa Fuji come and tell me that himself." Minami's fingers tightened and tightened again on the railing until the tips went white. In the end she only smoothed her hair and said, "All right. Since you're used to being thrown away face to face, I'll arrange it." What Nishiki did not know was that before coming to find her, Minami had already gone to Kitagawa Fuji. She cried in front of him until her voice grew hoarse, but Fuji only handed her a handkerchief. Casting away all pride, she clutched at his hand, fell against him, and demanded with burning eyes, "Fuji, can we start again?" But he pushed her away coldly. "Minami, don't do this. My world now has only Matsumoto Nishiki in it." Minami stared at him in disbelief. The refusal in his eyes was so firm that she finally tore her hand away. "Do you really love Matsumoto Nishiki that much? She is only my substitute. If I hadn't rejected you first, you would already be mine." Fuji shook his head. "Minami, I was obsessed with you before only because I couldn't have you. That's why I clung to you for a whole year. But Matsumoto Nishiki..." He paused there, but the rest could already be heard. She was not beautiful in any extraordinary way. Sometimes she was foolish enough to be almost ridiculous. And yet over these days she had become like a vine, growing and winding through his heart until he could no longer pull her out.
It was then that Hayama Minami finally broke. The boy who had once chased her so desperately was now pushing her away just as absolutely. She caught at his arm and cried, "If there were no Matsumoto Nishiki, would you still refuse me?" Kitagawa Fuji pried her fingers away with all his strength and stood silent while she sobbed. At last she screamed, "Kitagawa Fuji, if you won't have me, one day you'll regret it." In the dim corner of an old room, with October wind rattling old newspapers pasted over a broken window, money changed hands and photographs were pointed at. That was Matsumoto Nishiki, Minami said. Once it was done, the money would all be theirs. After sending Minami away, Nishiki skipped class and hid under her blanket, her whole body aching as if she were being cut apart. Before long Minami called again. Nishiki had always known that one day Kitagawa Fuji would make the break clear. She had simply never imagined it would come so fast. On the phone Minami laughed, reckless and satisfied. "Matsumoto Nishiki, Kitagawa Fuji asked me to tell you to meet him at that old warehouse you two used to go to. Kitagawa Fuji, you're really cruel. You can't even break up with me yourself? Then I'll return your happiness to you. I'll wait for you there. Don't fail to come." Nishiki stared at the phone for a long time before finally pressing send on a reply and switching it off. Then she sat there in a daze. It was nearly noon before she put on her coat and went out. Even at the very end, she clung stubbornly to one thought: if she arrived one minute late, then perhaps the parting would not have to come quite so soon. At the same time, on the bars beside the football field, Kitagawa Fuji sat tossing a tiny gift box up into the air and catching it. October wind was not yet biting, but it still felt terribly cold. He had not told Nishiki he would be coming. He wanted to surprise her, to make up for missing her birthday. He had even counted the rhythm of the tosses: about one second each. By the time he reached sixteen hundred, school would be over and he could go find her. But when he had only reached six hundred, the phone in his pocket shrieked. His face lit up at the sender's name, and then, in the next instant, went dead white. With shaking hands he pulled out his phone and called Nishiki. The unending tone made him paler still. He dialed Hayama Minami next, and it took him three tries before the call went through. When her cold voice came on the line, he spoke through clenched teeth. "Hayama Minami, listen carefully. If anything happens to Matsumoto Nishiki, you'll be buried with it." The gift box slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. He turned and ran for the school gate.
He had never before felt time stretch so long. The road seemed to have no end. He only knew that he kept running until his legs were heavy as iron. At last he shoved open the warehouse door and light rushed into the dilapidated space. Several men sitting on the floor, playing cards, jumped so badly that the cards spilled from their hands. Fuji swept the place with one glance. When he saw that Nishiki was not there, the strain in his face finally eased a little. Then he looked at the men and said, each word quiet and terribly clear, "As long as I'm here, none of you will lay a finger on Matsumoto Nishiki." Hayama Minami looked at him, now covered in blood, and lost all strength, sinking to the floor. Staring at those vulgar men chewing gum, she hurled the envelope of money at them so that red bills flew everywhere. Then she lunged at the men crouching to gather the money and clawed at them. "I never told you to touch him. Bastards, who told you to touch him?" They pushed her away coldly. She sat there numbly, able only to repeat Kitagawa Fuji's name over and over. One of them stepped forward and kicked her to the ground. "Crazy woman," he said. "If we hadn't stuck him first, were we supposed to wait for him to stab us? Still, he was a strange one. He ran toward the outskirts instead of back into town. There were too many people on the road to the city. We wouldn't have dared chase him there. But he kept running deeper out here, like there was some beast waiting for him on the road back." Hayama Minami stared at the boy lying on the ground, and all at once the tears broke through. At last she cried aloud. "Kitagawa Fuji, you idiot. In the end, you still wouldn't run back, because you were afraid of leading danger to Nishiki." One of the thugs counted the money and glanced at Fuji. "What a waste. Turns out he was a real lover." Then he turned to Minami and crouched close enough that his face nearly brushed hers. "You're a venomous woman yourself, you know that? You were ruthless enough to have us ruin your classmate. If anyone ever finds out about today, you'll be finished and so will we. We don't care. Our lives are rotten anyway. But it would be a pity for such a pretty beauty as you. So keep your mouth shut." After that, the men quickly found shovels. The sky darkened at terrifying speed. The world, too, fell silent. No one knew that a boy had loved one person all the way to the end of his life.
Matsumoto Nishiki waited in the ruined warehouse until both her legs had gone numb. The daylight gradually drained away. Playing cards scattered near the door lifted and skittered on the wind. By eight in the evening, Kitagawa Fuji still had not come. He was probably afraid she would cling to him and refuse to let go, she thought. At last Nishiki lowered her head and turned away. That October, Kitagawa Fuji vanished from her world. He did not answer his phone. He could not be found in the classroom, the tavern, or the countryside where they used to sketch. Nishiki despaired and used her mother's connections to complete the paperwork to transfer back to her old school. Before leaving, she went once to the family building where she had first met him. Looking at the window he had once smashed, she stood there with a cold gaze and tears trembling at the tips of her lashes. Two years of persistence had still failed to put down roots in that boy's heart. From beginning to end, she thought, there had only ever been Hayama Minami there. The night she had called him from the washroom on her birthday, when he said a friend was in trouble, she had heard a girl's voice calling his name on the other end. Later, when she had gone by taxi to the building where he lived, she had seen him and Minami in the little garden below. This time Minami had not walked away. She was holding his hand, clinging to his arm, crying as she looked at him. In the end Nishiki had not stepped forward to disturb them, not wanting to stand in the way of two people piecing their old dream back together. She had only turned and gone. All she had wanted in the end was to hear him tell her himself that he had never loved her, to have him deny the last scrap of hope she had. Yet she had never imagined he would choose so ruthless a way to cast her off, disappearing so completely from her world that not a trace remained. And so, other than leaving exactly as he seemed to want, what else could she do? Matsumoto Nishiki walked away with that same stubborn decisiveness, and even after she got on the train she never once looked back at Nanseicho. Perhaps later in life she would meet a different sort of boy, gentle and scholarly, fall in love, marry, and live out her days without ever knowing that there had once been a stubborn boy who loved her like this, right up until his life ran out.