The Boy Who Blushed

Many years later, when a taxi circled the streets around the railway station again and again, Shiraishi Misaki thought of that boy who had been about her own age and finally understood that the quickening in her heart had only been a moment in the past, one she herself had stretched out across many years. The boy had rain caught in the fine down above his lip. He grabbed a black folding umbrella, then pulled out a hundred-note and handed it to Misaki. He did not open the umbrella at once. He stood there holding it foolishly, watching while Misaki felt the bill with her fingers to see whether it was real, and his face flushed bright red. After one glance up at him, she found herself thinking, What a purehearted boy, and his blush tugged one up into her own face as well. By then the rain was coming down harder. Misaki hurriedly lowered her head to dig for change in her bag, but by the time she looked up again, the bus doors were already closing. The boy had run aboard and found a seat. He had to be in a rush to catch the bus, so he forgot all about the change. Misaki ran after it for a few steps, but the bus vanished into the smoky rain. Later her business improved. Passersby bought up umbrellas one after another, and her wallet gradually thickened. But thieves work on rainy days too, and by the time she was down to her last three umbrellas, a group of people came over pretending to buy. They were especially clingy. One of them even insisted on opening an umbrella to inspect it. So while Misaki was helping them test one out, the damp stack of money she had tucked away was plucked off by two fingers. She cried all night for that. She wished Yokohama would never rain again, or at least would rain a little less, because the heavier the rain, the sadder it made people. Losing that money broke Misaki's heart.

Misaki fell ill, and who could say the rain was not to blame. But what made her truly sick was the sickness in her heart. She blamed herself for losing other people's money and hated herself for not having eyes in the back of her head and ears in every direction. In the end she ignored her family's advice and went to school anyway, because she did not want to hear their consolations. It was morning exercise period, and Misaki had taken sick leave. Leaning against the window frame, she watched the others march in step. Left, right, left, right. The PE teacher's chants even put a little spirit back into her. Then she looked down and saw that boy. It was really him. He was two classes late, trailing at the end of the line, the black umbrella still stuck at an angle in his schoolbag. Misaki could not focus for the whole class. The moment it ended, she went straight to his classroom. Standing beneath the window, she said awkwardly, "I still haven't given you your change from yesterday." She dug in her pocket and brought out twenty-four, then bit her lip and added, "Wait for me. I'll go borrow the rest." The boy's face turned red again. He kept saying, "I'd almost forgotten, really, I'd almost forgotten," but by then Misaki had already run back to her own classroom. In those days she did not have many friends. Her classmates said her Yokohama dialect was not good enough, her standard speech still had too much of her hometown in it, she was not pretty enough, and her family did not have much money, so they all kept a certain distance. That was no surprise. But there was someone who treated her well: a sturdy boy named Yuki Yuto. Whenever there was lateness, truancy, or troublemaking with teachers, he was always involved. Rumor said he had a great many girlfriends, and rumor also said that he wanted Misaki to become one more. After asking around about her, he came swaggering over and said grandly, "If something's wrong, tell your big brother here. I'll fix it for you."

That day, just after Misaki handed the money to the boy and he turned back toward his classroom, the person behind him collapsed. Misaki woke up in the school infirmary, with the boy sitting at her bedside the whole time. "Were you too sick to eat?" he asked. "Is that why you fainted? Let me buy you lunch at noon." The little restaurant outside the school was cheap enough, but the boy ordered so many dishes that Misaki had the feeling the remaining ninety from her change had all been spent on her instead: pickled-fish stew, cashew chicken, salt-and-pepper squid, shredded pork with green peppers, seaweed and egg-drop soup. He kept piling food into her bowl and saying, "Eat more." "Thank you," Misaki said, ducking her head into her rice bowl to hide her smile. She came away from that meal understanding one thing: whenever heaven takes one thing from you, it gives you another in return. She had lost her money, yes, but the moment she turned around she had met Asakura Shuichi, and at once even her illness began to get better.

Misaki was determined to return the rest of the money to Asakura Shuichi for a reason. As she herself told Yuto, "I just wanted a chance to talk to him. Don't you know? Boys who blush are almost extinct. If you run into one, you have to treasure him." If Yuto was half as clever as he liked to think, he must have guessed what she meant. He had every trait of a boy from the north: broad, boisterous, straightforward, and sharp. So he immediately bellowed, "Are you stupid? Return what? He probably doesn't even remember you." Yuto even rubbed red chalk dust onto his own face and said, "Look, I can do that too." Just then the school loudspeaker was broadcasting the literary performance in the auditorium. They said a famous alum had come back to visit the school. Originally only a small group of students had been meant to perform, but now one of the actors had suddenly taken ill, so they were recruiting from the whole school to save the show. It was not exactly a desirable role. Who wanted to dress up in something fat and ridiculous and play a pig-headed creature? So handsome Tang Sanzang came to Gao Village, stood there for half a minute, and looked as if he were about to turn to stone. Then an old pig lumbered onto the stage. The oversized costume was several sizes bigger than Misaki's actual body. In a babbling voice she announced, "I overslept my afternoon nap," and the whole hall burst out laughing. That day, when Misaki saw that Tang Sanzang was Asakura Shuichi, she did not hesitate before climbing into the prop suit. People said the entire sketch existed only because the school happened to own that incredibly realistic costume, because it was the kind of thing meant to make the visiting dignitaries laugh. People say a lot of things. But had they heard what it looked like when a 161-centimeter Shiraishi Misaki had to carry a 182-centimeter Sun Wukong in a pig carrying his bride scene? Misaki's pig head fell clean off, and the audience's joy rose like a sea. Later Yuto said to her, "No way. Asakura Shuichi blushed again just now. You looked that ugly and he still blushed when he saw you?" Misaki was rather proud of herself. Feeling very pleased, she said, "Well, I am a girl, aren't I? And to him, I'm a special girl." To thank her, Asakura took her out for ice cream, and while they ate he asked her to tell him about herself. So she told him the funny stories from her small town: which family's dog had fallen in love with which family's cat, whose child had been switched at birth, who had been married twenty years before discovering his wife was in fact his half sister. Ordinary people had more stories than anyone could count. "Now you tell me about this city," she said, looking at him expectantly. Asakura simply pointed at the high-rise outside and said, "See that building? It's the tallest in the city." As they looked up at it, a big speaker in the square nearby began playing "Goodbye Second Chome." Misaki could not understand the Cantonese lyrics, but she froze, and then, in the middle of Asakura's bafflement, she wiped away a few tears. All at once she felt she understood love. Once her heart had recovered, Misaki returned to the corner to sell umbrellas, and Asakura Shuichi went back to buying them. Some people buy an umbrella and then forget to take it the moment they step out. Asakura was one of them. One day he stopped in front of another vendor and was just taking out a hundred-note when Misaki happened to see him. She dragged him away that day and handed him her own umbrella. "Give it back tomorrow," she said. Asakura looked embarrassed. "It feels as if all of Yokohama's rain falls on me," he said.

But even in those few lines of plot, details still mattered. Misaki dragging Asakura away infuriated that older vendor. "You little girl, how dare you steal business from me? Don't you know people say I'm a tiger you don't dare touch?" Misaki shook her head. "He's my friend. Can't I lend an umbrella to my friend?" Unfortunately, the God of Wealth was on holiday that day, and Misaki's luck had turned rowdy. She had run into a thug. But she was also still a seventeen-year-old girl, a newborn calf unafraid of tigers, and she insisted on arguing the matter through. Which only made the whole thing less and less clear. And yet why was it that Misaki was the one quarrelling, while Asakura's face was the one that flushed? In a small voice he told her, "Forget it. At worst I can just buy one from him..." Before he could finish, the old vendor exploded. He gave up selling umbrellas altogether and ran after Misaki, trying to hit her. Luckily the rain stopped at exactly the right moment, as though the Dragon King had turned off both taps at once; once the water was gone, the king released the people too. The street filled back up, and the old man no longer dared act wildly. He only jabbed a finger at Misaki and barked, "You just wait," before storming off. Afterward, Asakura wiped the rain from her forehead and smiled. "So you're a little chili pepper," he said. "Now I owe you another favor." At seventeen, Misaki did not want Asakura Shuichi's favors. You could not eat favors, and you could not tell them as jokes. Who knew whether he would grow up to be a rich man or a cook? Misaki only wanted the man himself. But just as she was indulging that fantasy, Yuto delivered a fatal blow. He told her Asakura already had a girlfriend. "I know what school she goes to. Want to come pay her a visit?" Misaki skipped class for the first time in her life for the sake of a romantic rival. They stood outside a classroom and listened to the students reading aloud inside. Yuto pointed to a girl with shoulder-length hair and said, "That's her." Yokohama girls were tall and pale, but this girl was too tall and too pale even by those standards. Misaki waited until the class ended and the girls passed by her in a group, and only then did she understand what real disappointment felt like. She knocked her forehead against the wall and groaned, "I knew it. The girlfriend of a boy who blushes would be incredible. What am I supposed to do?" Yuto planted his hands on his hips and laughed. "Come back with me." Misaki looked at him, black lines all over her face. "Could you at least learn to blush first?"

Yuto could not learn to blush, just as people caught in a triangle can never learn calmness. Once Misaki learned that Kana existed, Kana learned that there was a transfer girl aiming for Asakura Shuichi. So the girls came charging over, insisting that Asakura reject Misaki to her face. Asakura looked at Misaki, but he did not open his mouth. In that moment of his dull silence, Yuto stepped forward and declared, "I'm Shiraishi Misaki's boyfriend. I have no idea what you're all talking about." The whole classroom erupted. Had Misaki admitted to any such thing? Of course not. Instead she walked calmly up to Kana, ignored both her height and her pale skin, looked straight into those slanted eyes, and said with complete certainty, "I do like Asakura Shuichi. And if you give it time, he will definitely end up liking me too." Later Yuto asked her, "Weren't you all insecure? How did your fighting power shoot up all of a sudden?" Misaki smiled. "Because I'm a Cancer. My type is this: when I see how good someone else is, I get terribly low. But if they use that goodness to show off in front of me, I become a queen on the spot and nothing can stop me. Yuto, you helped me today, and I still turned you down. I'm sorry." "That star-sign stuff has to be fake," Yuto laughed. Then he added, "If people laughing at me can take some of the attention off you, I'm still willing." He also understood, a little, that without the right timing, the right place, the right air around them, he was never going to move Misaki, no matter how earnest his confession might be. Strong dragons cannot crush the local snake; that old saying flashed through Misaki's mind as Kana finally stalked off. Then Asakura blushed again. "The first time I bought an umbrella from you," he said, "I went to find her afterward. I was going to break up with her. We'd been together a year, and I'd had enough of her temper and her bullying." Misaki loved watching the colors shift across his face. Like a seasoned career woman with everything under control, she said to him, "Leave getting her to let go to me," forgetting entirely to ask whether he liked her at all, or whether this was just wishful thinking on her part. She counted through her own good points one by one: positive, warm, kind, generous. If a girl like that could not be liked, then there was no justice in the world. Then the class bell rang. Asakura walked away. Misaki looked up at the dark sky and announced, with the expression of someone wagering her life, "If he likes me, then make it rain." The sun heard and instantly drove the black clouds away. Misaki frowned. "That doesn't count. Let's start over." Asakura thought she was adorable.

Cells divide, one becoming two. Umbrella sellers divide too, one person becoming two. In 2002, Asakura Shuichi helped Shiraishi Misaki sell umbrellas. The two of them ran around in raincoats, and he said, "Actually, I was afraid that old vendor might come looking for trouble." The uncle never came. Cupid did. That day he drew his bow and shot clean through two hearts. "Shiraishi Misaki," Asakura said, "I actually like you too." "What?" she cried. "Really?" After the boy repeated it softly a second time, Misaki's shoes lost contact with the ground. She slipped, stumbled hard, and ended up sitting inside a newspaper kiosk, doing nothing but watching the boy sell umbrellas for her. Asakura had long legs and ran fast. His face was easy and friendly. He sold the umbrellas out in no time, wandered around the underground shopping mall for a while, and then came back brandishing a prize. "You lost money that time you sold me an umbrella," he said, "so I'm giving you this wallet." The zipper had a special design. Ordinary hands could not undo it in one smooth motion. Misaki accepted the wallet in a burst of joy. While she wrote her name on it, "Goodbye Second Chome" started playing in the square again. The two of them listened together. Out of the whole song they only really understood one line: The years are long, our clothes are thin. Later Misaki often wondered whether the person playing that song had once been to Second Chome, whether he had said farewell to some deep love there. She began singing along with the music, and Asakura blushed and hummed with her. At the end he suggested, "Hey, this song seems to have some kind of fate with us. Why don't we make it our song? If we hear it again years from now, we'll remember this day." But songs are never only for two people. Songs belong to crowds in revelry. There was a little shop outside the school gates that usually hosted students' banquets, though people could rent it out for parties too. One Tuesday after school, a notice pasted outside caught Misaki's eye. It said, Celebrating our one-year anniversary. Students who know us and students who don't are all welcome. Just like that, her heart was moved. She found Yuto and asked him to take her to have a look, because she had never attended one of those urban masquerade gatherings before. That day she wore a paper butterfly over her eyes and stared in wonder at the Narutos and Inuyashas walking past her. But more astonishing still was the fact that Asakura Shuichi was standing beside Kana, and he did not look happy. Misaki did not know how she had ended up in front of him. "You don't need to lie to me like this," she said. "I'm a country girl from a small place, but I'm not stupid. You don't have to tell me you two broke up if what you really want is to keep one foot in each boat. I wouldn't let you step on me anyway." Asakura caught her arm and whispered, "I'm not some spineless boy. She has something on me. Give me a little time and I'll deal with it. Believe me." Misaki lost her voice for a while. Later, between the beer bottles, she finally got drunk. She staggered over to Kana and pointed at her. "I know she has something on you," she slurred, "but everyone needs one beautiful memory. Why don't you put your blackmail aside for now?" Then her voice rose. "Listen to me. If you insist on fighting over him, then let's compete fairly!" Misaki ruined the entire masquerade party. She threw up all over the place and mumbled drunkenly, "Finish this cup. Then another."

That weekend, it rained again. Misaki was selling umbrellas along the pedestrian street when she saw Kana walking in the rain with several other girls. The moment they spotted Misaki, they surrounded her. "I've finally got you in my hands," Kana said. That day she struck the umbrellas right out of Misaki's arms, and then the girls kicked and trampled them. Misaki panicked like some off-balance little animal, running to stop one girl and then another, utterly helpless. A crowd gathered, of course, but nobody stepped in to pull them apart. Girls fighting was entertaining. Luckily people were not yet so bored in those days that they would film it and put it online. In the end all of them were taken to the police station. The police had been dealing with thieves near the railway station for the last few days, and several men with handcuffs still on were standing against the wall while an officer coaxed them gently. "You all know the situation. Talk, and you'll be treated leniently." One scruffy man rolled his eyes and suddenly pointed at Misaki. "That's her," he insisted. "She's the one I stole from. She sells umbrellas." Imagine that. Misaki had barely had time to turn from grief toward delight when a police officer said, "Come with me, please. Tell me where your counterfeit note came from." There had recently been a counterfeit case in the city, he explained. The fake notes were sequentially numbered, and one of hers happened to match. "It was from a customer..." Misaki began, stunned. That day only Asakura Shuichi had given her a hundred-note. She was struck dumb. Kana, however, cried out at once, "I know. It was Asakura Shuichi's." Then she shot Misaki a sidelong look and said with satisfaction, "If I can't have him, neither can you. I win." By evening the rain had stopped. Yuto was waiting for Misaki outside the station. "I'm sorry," he said. "I was the one who told Kana you were on the pedestrian street. You can think I meant harm if you want, but I thought maybe she wanted to talk things through with you. I didn't want you to keep being lied to by Asakura Shuichi. I know this probably makes you dislike me even more now. But please don't ignore me. I really only wanted to be good to you." He was talking in a rush and then, lifting his head without warning, saw her faint. It was the second time Misaki had collapsed. This time the doctor diagnosed severe anemia. Lying in bed, she listened to Guangliang's clean voice singing somewhere nearby that the rain outside would not stop, that the traces of someone still remained beneath an umbrella. And then she saw a black umbrella out in the corridor, waiting there to dry. Asakura Shuichi had come. But he had left in a police car. Slowly Misaki calmed down. She began to think a little about why she had loved someone so stubbornly. Perhaps even he had not known what was good in him. She thought for a long time. Dimly, she remembered Asakura saying beside her bed, "What I tried so hard to hide has finally been exposed."

That boy who blushed never appeared on campus again. His parents were arrested. He left school and wandered the busy districts like a young delinquent. That was the leverage Kana had held over him. She knew there was a whole box of counterfeit notes in his house, so she had used that to force him not to break up with her. No one expected it would all be exposed because of one accident. Every day after her IV drip, Misaki would stand at the crossroads near the newspaper office and watch to see whether Asakura Shuichi passed by. A few days later, a man and woman caught her interest only because she heard the man say, "If you want to spend counterfeit money, you have to find some seller who looks rushed, who doesn't seem sharp." The words hit her like cold water. In an instant everything became clear. How was Misaki supposed to persuade herself that even blushing could be fake in this world? What Asakura had shown her had not been shyness but shame. There were so many people selling things on the street, and yet he had chosen only her to pass off that counterfeit hundred. Was that special care? Absolutely not. Linking all the things that had happened one after another, Misaki raised her head to the gray sky and let her tears fall weightless down. That day she went and got her hair cut short like a boy's, determined to shake herself awake. She did not expect Asakura Shuichi to be waiting for her by the road. He had been there a long time. He had wanted to tell her, Be my girlfriend. I really have fallen for you. You're all I have left. He had wanted to tell her he had been genuinely ashamed, ashamed enough that he had not even dared ask for his change that first day and had only run away. But good things do not arrive simply because one person wants them to. The crowd of people leaving school and work was too dense. All he remembered was Misaki's softly permed hair, and while he was searching for that image, he missed her. At seventeen, still not done with being seventeen, Misaki transferred schools again. Yuto came to see her off. He comforted her by saying, "Boys who blush are too lethal. You took one look at him and gave him a score of 99.99, so of course you couldn't tell whether he was good or bad. That's not your fault. Cheer up." "Right," Misaki said with a twist of her mouth. "So what if he blushed? So what if I liked him? So what if I was moved? Once it's fake, all of it can get lost." But in her heart she was thinking that if only he came, if only he said he was sorry, she might still forgive him. Because boys are all pure at heart. They pass counterfeit bills and tell counterfeit lies only because they get lucky enough to try. It was not really their own fault. It was the world that drove them. When the train pulled out, Yokohama was under the last rain of that year. Yuto ran after it. "Do you know why I was so good to you?" he shouted. "You once lent me an umbrella. I didn't have any money on me, so I took your umbrella and ran. The next day, because I was too embarrassed to return it to you in person like a big boy should, I hung it on the handle of the newspaper stand. Because I never blushed, you didn't remember that I was the one with the umbrella. Shiraishi Misaki, do you really not remember me?" Misaki shook her head, but tears kept sliding down her cheeks. Perhaps it was because of two love-at-first-sight moments. Or perhaps because of nothing at all.

After Misaki returned to that small city, she got into college. When she finished university, she came back and opened an umbrella shop of her own, one that specialized in Paradise umbrellas. She would tell customers, "Maybe if you carry a Paradise umbrella in the rain, you'll find what heaven feels like." Some people thought that sounded deranged. Some thought it had a certain atmosphere. So business was neither good nor bad. Over the years, many ridiculous things happened in that small city, and among them was the story of a young man searching for an umbrella girl. He came all the way to her town, and suddenly advertisements looking for the umbrella girl sprang up everywhere. Plenty of girls ran off to join the excitement, and all kinds of absurd misunderstandings followed, but the result was obvious. The young man left disappointed, quietly slipping away. Still, he did not give up. Then one day, while Misaki was on LINE, a stranger sent her a message. Do you remember me? it said. I'm Asakura Shuichi. They made a video call. The boy had turned his camera's color so red that his already flushed face looked as bright as an apple. He said he wanted terribly to know what she looked like now, wanted terribly to see her again. The old boy blushed again, and Misaki found she still could not shake her fondness for that trait. Her feelings turned and turned, so in the end she went off to listen to music. In "Goodbye Second Chome" the singer sang, It turned out things had once been happy, only I never noticed; if I could forget what I longed for, then the years would be long and our clothes would be thin. The first time Misaki heard that song, she was seventeen. She had not known why it made her heart hurt, only that tears fell to the floor like a small rain. The second time she heard it, she learned that the famous Second Chome was the gay district of Shinjuku in Japan, and her tears fell because even the song had deceived her. It was not the sorrow of the lovers' parting she had once imagined. The third time she heard it, seven years had passed. She had cried until she barely had the energy left. At last she understood that with some songs there is no point in chasing the songwriter's original feelings. Better simply to listen on in sadness. Once the song is over, let it be over. One still has to find a way out and keep walking. So Misaki said, All right. See you in Yokohama.