Tears Sink into the Coral Sea

Perhaps learning to let go is one way to be happy.

[I] Secret Garden

If you walked out from Rainbow Road and followed the pale sky and the shoreline, you could make your way slowly to a stretch of sea. There was a path of small pebbles there, a quiet wind, and evening clouds stained by sunset until everything looked like a poem. That place was the "secret garden" shared by Sakura Miyagi and me. It had a beautiful name: Coral Sea. Sakura Miyagi was my best friend. When we were little, one cracker was enough for the two of us, one stool held us both, one bed was wide enough for us to sleep in together. We used to buy salty popsicles that cost almost nothing, or huge jars of fruit candy, then sit in our room dividing everything between us. We pasted the candy wrappers onto the window glass and turned them into decorations. I thought we were the two children in the world who loved each other best. Sakura's father and mine both worked in coastal shipping and came home at most twice a year. On our island, the children either followed their parents aboard or stayed behind, waiting for them to return. Sakura and I were always the ones standing hand in hand at the shore, staring out over the blue water and waiting for our fathers' ships. That was why we gave that stretch of sea a beautiful name of our own and called it Coral Sea. We both thought coral was the loveliest of living things, the most precious gem, the luckiest word. Guarding that patch of sea felt like guarding our little friendship, a friendship as precious as coral itself. Sakura always took care of me like an older sister. Whenever someone bullied me, she would rush in and start fighting. All I could hear was the sea wind rushing past my ears, and all I could smell was the sweet scent that drifted from Sakura in the wind. Whenever she sat on the pebbles and looked out at the sea, there was always something especially pale and desolate in her eyes. I never knew when that look had begun, as if a maturity and understanding that did not belong to a child had been poured into her too early. One of us was soft and one of us was strong. My softness existed because Sakura would protect me. Sakura's strength existed because she had to protect the softness inside herself.

[II] Tears Too Painful to See

When Sakura was ten, her mother grew tired of loneliness and ran off with another man. Out of three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, there are three hundred spent waiting; not every woman can bear that. She left Sakura at my house and slipped a divorce agreement into her schoolbag inside a kraft-paper envelope. Watching her mother walk away so hurriedly, never even turning back, Sakura asked me, "Natsumi Asato, was I really born from her?" She had known her mother was going. She sat on the sofa in our living room, calm, stroking the brown envelope. I took a big tub of ice cream out of the freezer and gave it to her. She shoveled it into her mouth, one large bite after another, forcing the same strained smile to stay on her face. I said, "Sakura Miyagi, cry. At least cry." She shook her head stubbornly. "Crying is your right," she said. "Not mine." So that day I cried instead. I wanted to finish crying all of Sakura's sorrow for her. The green hanging lamp in the room made her face look both transparent and blurred, and in her eyes I could no longer see any trace of the childish innocence we had once carried while running around to buy candy. In that moment I saw in Sakura something made out of strength and sadness together, a terribly complicated thing. That night I held her thin body in my arms while she shivered. Her voice sounded as if it had been wrung straight out of her throat. "Natsumi Asato," she whispered, "Mama said I was as precious as coral. Then why did she still leave?" I did not know how to comfort her. I just stroked her silky hair and said, "Even if she's gone, you're still the most precious coral in our Coral Sea." Sakura fell asleep. When I got up in the middle of the night, I saw a single crystal tear hanging from the corner of her eye, transparent and round, shining in the darkness. It hurt my heart to look at it.

[III] The Boy I Liked

After Sakura's mother left, Sakura lived in the old house with us for a long time. Her father left her in our care and transferred her living expenses into my mother's account every month. Everyone said my mother had two daughters, that Sakura and I looked more and more like twins. I always thought only people who did not know us could say something like that. Anyone who truly saw into our hearts would know that Sakura and I were nothing alike. Toru Kamiya was the only one who noticed the difference. The first time he appeared, he stepped up in front of me with an injured bird cupped in his hands. The little bird rested there safely in his broad palm. There was a soft, moist light at the corners of his eyes, and the wind seemed to part itself across his brow. He was a clean, comfortable sort of boy. I was so nervous that I could hardly meet his eyes. That day he asked whether I wanted to share his umbrella. Before I had even answered, the rain began, and he opened it over us and said with a smile, "Now even if you don't want one, you don't have a choice." That smile was enough. In that instant I fell. The rain was a gray mist, and there was a gentleness in the eyes of that boy. I felt as though my soul had been carried away. We walked home side by side, and halfway there we ran into Sakura, who had come out with an umbrella to find me. Her blue dress with the tiny flowers looked even lighter and prettier in the rain. When Toru saw her, his eyes brightened and for a brief moment he looked lost. Sakura smiled at him, then looked at me and said, "Little thing, do you have a boyfriend now?" My face went red to the tips of my ears. I slapped at Sakura and said, "No, he isn't my boyfriend." Laughing openly, she pulled me out from under Toru's umbrella and said to him, "Hello. I'm Natsumi Asato's older sister, Sakura Miyagi." That day Toru heard both our names from Sakura's lips, and in that instant he harvested the hearts of two girls in bloom. Looking at Sakura, he slowly repeated her name under his breath, Sakura Miyagi, Sakura Miyagi, like a string of beautiful notes hanging in the rain. After she dragged me into the stairwell and turned back to see Toru still standing there in a daze, she laughed and said, "Little thing, your boyfriend is really cute." I kept insisting Toru was not my boyfriend, but Sakura would not believe me. That night she crawled under my blanket to talk, and we lay there in the darkness with our hands clasped together. Her hands were warm, warm enough to pass their heat straight into another person. "That Toru of yours is really handsome," she said. I only smiled softly in the dark, letting the smile vanish into it. I knew that after seeing Sakura, Toru would never look toward me again. But I would not blame Sakura, because when you love someone, there is no way to predict how it will end.

[IV] He Really Wasn't My Boyfriend

Everything anyone said about Toru Kamiya came from his plays. He was the young director of the school's drama club, a new club at the time, and he was its first president. When he had just entered high school, a story of his published in a magazine had caused a sensation. He adapted it into a stage play, found a few people to perform it, and with a faculty adviser behind them, the piece became the obvious choice when Naha held an interschool high-school drama competition. In fact, I had heard Toru's name long before I met him. The most thoughtful stories in the school paper and the most fluent, cloud-like poems in the city paper were all written by him. He always wore a water-blue shirt with a white school tie, and even in a crowd there was something cool and solitary about him. He was not exceptionally outstanding in the usual ways. His grades were not dazzling, and his family background was not extraordinary. What he had was a gifted young writer's air, something unmistakably his own. So even though I noticed him very early on, I always watched him from afar and never dared go near. It was exactly that old saying: when love draws close, timidity grows. A common disease in little girls like me. When Toru's drama club was casting a leading actress, Sakura and I both went. Sakura only meant to accompany me, but she was the one who got selected. In the cramped violet-lit room of the club, I saw the look in Toru's eyes when he saw Sakura. There was a thread of nervousness in it as he said, "Hello, Sakura Miyagi." Sakura pushed me up beside him and said, "You'd better take good care of my little thing from now on." This time Toru hurried to explain, "I'm not Natsumi Asato's boyfriend. I'm single." He was so eager to explain himself to Sakura, afraid she might misunderstand. I stood beside him nodding and saying, "That's right. I met him the same day you did. He just walked me home once." Sakura seemed half convinced and looked from me to him. Toru smiled and said, "Sakura Miyagi, you're really adorable." I do not remember every tiny detail of that day anymore. Most of it was someone else's romance, and I was only the witness standing to one side. When I came out of the drama club and walked alone along the campus road lined with rain trees, I felt a desolation I had never known before. The sun was fierce. Sweat slid down my forehead and fell, one drop after another, onto the cracked paving stones. A bicycle suddenly hit me and sent both of us tumbling. I scraped my hand, and blood welled out of my arm. Frowning, I pushed myself up and met the apologetic gaze of a boy with gold-rimmed glasses, delicate features, skin finer than most girls', a tall frame, and a sunny smile. "Are you all right?" he asked. I shook my head, clutching my hand, and tried to leave on my own. He followed after me, saying, "Are you sure you're all right? Shouldn't I take you to the infirmary? Say something. If you don't say anything, I'll be afraid you have internal injuries." Blood seeped through my fingers and dropped onto the ground. The cracked pavement drank it just the way it had drunk my sweat. I did not feel pain at all. I sat on the back of his bicycle and kept silent, and he seemed somehow to understand that silence and took me to the infirmary. I was no longer afraid of strangers, because I knew Sakura Miyagi would soon be saying goodbye to me, and I had to learn to face all my strangers alone. In the infirmary the doctor told the boy, "Arashi Kashiwagi, this student is fine. No need to worry." As I sat there on the stool, I happened to see Toru Kamiya and Sakura Miyagi walking side by side across the campus. Together they looked like an entire sea of flowers in bloom, two people with distinct temperaments standing there in perfect harmony. I stared in a daze, not even sure what I was feeling. Arashi came over, followed my gaze, and said meaningfully, "So that's why you're unhappy." I glared at him. "Who's unhappy? You are." He threw back his head and laughed. "You finally spoke. I thought you were mute. I was wondering how our school could admit someone disabled." I jumped off the stool and hurried out. I had no wish to speak with that canary in golden frames.

[V] Small-Minded Girls

When I got home, Sakura was downstairs with a woman. Sakura said nothing. The woman kept clinging to her, and Sakura's face was hard with anger while the woman, awkward and humble, still held on to her sleeve. When she turned, I saw a beautiful face, somewhat aged now but unable to hide how lovely it had once been. It was Sakura's mother. Sakura shook her hand off, grabbed me, and left. Her mother stood behind us watching in sorrow. Sakura led me into a noisy alley where there was a tiny bar. She ordered beer and kept drinking. I said, "Sakura, don't do this. Let's go. This place is awful." The air was thick with smoke and bad intentions. "Little thing, you go home first," Sakura said. "Let me drink." I refused to leave. A man passed her a cigarette. Sakura drew on it and choked so hard she coughed. I could not bear to see her like that. I tried to pull her up, but a man beside her shoved me away and had several others throw me out the door. Through the thick rose-red glass I saw Sakura laughing wildly inside the bar, and fear seized me. I ran, desperate to find help. On the way I ran into Toru Kamiya after evening study. "Quick, quick, Toru!" I shouted. "Help me save Sakura Miyagi!" His grip on his bookbag slackened, and he ran at once in the direction I pointed. I followed him. By the time we got to the bar, Sakura was gone. We asked everyone we could find whether they had seen her, but no one paid us any mind. They were too busy drinking and dancing. Toru and I walked that whole street like mad people, hoping to find Sakura half-drunk and vomiting in some corner. We found nothing. At last, on Aogiri Street at one in the morning, we saw her standing in the middle of the road with her clothes in disarray. I had never seen Sakura look so empty, like a shell without a soul, standing there foolishly laughing and paying no attention to the traffic flying past. Toru went over and pulled her to safety. Only then did Sakura seem to come back to herself. She flung her arms around him and cried. The sky at one in the morning was stained by Sakura's tears until it looked like torn ink paper. She was like a helpless bird resting against the solid tree of Toru Kamiya, and only there did she seem to find the slightest comfort. I never asked what had happened that night. When Sakura and I got home, she stayed in the bathroom for two hours before coming out. My mother, frightened, kept asking me what was wrong with her. I told her not to ask and to go to bed. While I dried Sakura's hair, she sat motionless in the dark room. She put her hand around my waist and cried into my clothes. "Why," she said, "does every time she appears only bring me endless pain?" After that night, Sakura moved out of our house and back into her own old one. She stopped coming to see me. She learned to smoke, to drink, to skip class. She even wanted to give up the lead role in the play. Toru came to me and asked me to persuade her. When I found her, she was in a manga shop near school drinking with a handful of little punks, smoke rolling everywhere, her whole person looking utterly changed. I said, "Sakura, you can't waste all of Toru Kamiya's work like this. You have to go." She took a long swallow of alcohol, loneliness clinging to every movement, and said, "Little thing, you're such a foolish child." In the end Sakura did go. But her attitude toward Toru changed. She no longer responded to him, only cooperated with his script. I did not once go to watch the rehearsals after that. Sakura and I grew distant, because of that night and because of Toru Kamiya. Girls can be that small-minded. Sometimes one tiny detail is all it takes for hearts to be separated by a thousand miles.

[VI] Sakura's Boyfriend

On the day of the performance, the heat was stifling. Frogs croaked in waves. Reeds trembled. The school auditorium was packed. I held my ticket and walked slowly inside, taking my seat close to the front and watching the actors onstage. Toru Kamiya stood there with a script in his hand directing everyone into place, calling for props, sounding every inch a real director, and his artistic air only grew more striking. Then the hall doors were shut, the lights went down, and Sakura Miyagi stepped onto the stage. She was beautiful as a fairy-tale princess. I knew why Toru liked her. Sakura had an extraordinary quality; because of everything she had gone through too early, she was more perceptive and self-possessed than any other girl. She came out in a red open-necked jacket, her makeup exquisite, her lines full of feeling, and she worked with the male lead so well that the entire play was a triumph. I applauded until everyone around me was on their feet. When it was over, I went backstage with flowers for Sakura and saw Toru talking to her. "Sakura Miyagi, why won't you accept me?" he asked. "Because I don't like you." "You're lying. How could you not?" "Not liking you means exactly that. Are you going to force me?" I froze, unsure whether I ought to slip away. Then someone behind me shoved my shoulder and said, "Classmate, what are you doing standing here?" I turned around. It was Arashi Kashiwagi, the boy who had taken me to the infirmary before. Irritated, I said, "What's it to you?" Sakura and Toru heard me and turned. Sakura called sweetly, "Arashi," then said to me, "Little thing, you came too." So I had no choice but to walk in. Toru's face had gone pale. I told Sakura she had acted beautifully. She patted my cheek and said she knew I was only trying to cheer her up. "Right, let me introduce my boyfriend," she added. "Arashi Kashiwagi, our leading man." I stared at Arashi. First, I had not known he was the male lead. Second, I had not known he was Sakura's boyfriend. Toru's face changed from white to furious, and he bolted. I ran after him. A proud person like him, humiliated so abruptly, might not be able to bear it. I chased him all the way to the same bar Sakura used to frequent. He collided with someone on the way in, and the toughs inside immediately laid hands on him. I grabbed a bottle from the table and smashed it over one man's head. Blood ran across the floor in a red wash. Then I seized Toru and ran. We tore through alley after alley before stopping at a noodle cart. Toru looked at me and said, amazed, "I didn't know someone so small could be that strong." "When people are afraid," I answered, "they find endless strength." I ordered a bowl of noodles. Toru came over, and we ate from the same bowl under the dim yellow light of the alley, its end nowhere in sight. When he looked up, he noticed the cut on my hand from the bottle. He took a tissue and wiped it for me, asking whether it hurt. I shook my head. He said, "You and Sakura Miyagi are both very strong girls." I nodded. He did not know that Sakura and I had once made a promise: if we ever cried, we had to cry facing the Coral Sea, because only the Coral Sea would preserve our tears, and only tears like that had value. After the noodles, Toru said goodbye to me at the mouth of the alley. Before leaving, he asked, "Natsumi Asato, would you be my girlfriend?" The confession was simple. The place was not romantic. The moon was only a bent tooth, and the stars were nowhere to be seen. But all the way home I still wore a gentle smile. At last I had heard Toru Kamiya say those words to me, even if I knew he only wanted a harbor from the storm.

[VII] Waiting Has No End

After the play, every relationship became clear. I was Toru Kamiya's girlfriend. Sakura Miyagi was Arashi Kashiwagi's girlfriend. Only then did I learn that Arashi's father was the vice-principal of our school, which explained why everyone seemed to know him and why he moved through campus as though it belonged to him. He was famous not only because he was handsome but because he played piano beautifully and got excellent grades. I had thought Sakura might choose Toru, but when someone like Arashi Kashiwagi appeared, a boy whose hardware and software were both far above standard, it was only natural that she would choose him instead. I felt relieved. I believed Toru would slowly give Sakura up. I believed that if I had enough time, I could change him. Thinking that way made the whole world feel bright and made my love seem full of hope. I invited Sakura to dinner. On a day when my mother was away at my grandmother's, I cooked for her, and she brought Arashi with her. He still wore those gold-rimmed glasses and still smiled as brightly as sunlight. He arrived with a huge bouquet of lilies and came into the kitchen to help chop vegetables. Sakura took ice cream from the fridge and ate it one spoonful after another. I asked Arashi when he and Sakura had gotten together. He kept cutting onions until tears streamed down his face and answered that he had known at exactly the same time I had. I told him he had to treat Sakura well or I would crack his head with an onion. He did not answer, only gave me a sour little smile that left me strangely unsettled. Through the glass door of the kitchen, I could see Toru sitting beside Sakura with the remote in his hand while she ate her ice cream in a dull, mechanical way, shoveling it into her mouth. Arashi asked whether I knew how to cook at all. I handed him the spatula and let him take over. That night's dinner was made by Arashi. He cooked so skillfully, even carving flowers from radishes, that I joked his father could not possibly be a vice-principal and had to be a restaurateur instead. Everyone laughed. Toru still looked at Sakura with something evasive in his gaze. I kept serving dishes around the table, feeling how warm and lonely the scene was at the same time. After dinner Sakura headed off in the direction of her house, while Toru and Arashi went the opposite way. Something about her back troubled me. I followed her and discovered that she was not going home at all. She went to our Coral Sea. The wind lifted her skirt into beautiful lines. From her pocket she took out a cigarette, lit it, and began smoking in deep pulls. The heavy smell of smoke flooded the shore. She looked as if she were waiting, just the way we had once stood there as children waiting for our fathers to come back, ships far out and hope impossibly distant.

[VIII] After Sakura Left

High-school life rushed on after each of us had found someone to belong to. My days were crammed with incomprehensible things like parabolas, equations, and thermal currents. Sakura Miyagi, meanwhile, gradually made it onto the school's blacklist; little by little her name came to be spoken by the students as though it were a kind of rot. Arashi Kashiwagi, however, still moved through life lightly. Now and then he would take me out to eat and bring me radish flowers he had carved with his own hands. I truly did not know whether he treated Sakura well. After I started going out with Toru, I also began to feel deeply guilty toward Sakura. Once, after she had changed for the worse, I asked Arashi why he had not taken better care of her. He looked at me helplessly and said, "If she would listen to me, why would I be standing here being questioned by you?" I took Toru to the Coral Sea more than once. Every time I hoped we might stumble across Sakura by accident, but she never came back there. I often stood alone looking over the water, waiting for some figure to return. Whenever I brought up Sakura, sadness would cloud Toru's eyes. He was my boyfriend, yet we never did anything truly intimate. In our third year, Sakura's father finally came home. After so many years at sea, he said he no longer wanted to drift, and he took Sakura away to another city to start over. When she left, Arashi and I went to see her off. Toru never came. Sakura pressed a charm into my hand and said she had prayed for it herself. "Little thing, wherever I am, I want you to be happy." I clung to her and cried, and she wiped my tears away and reminded me of our promise: never cry lightly, because only the Coral Sea could keep all our tears safe. Then she turned to Arashi and said, "Arashi, please help me take care of Natsumi Asato." Leaning close to my ear, she smiled again and whispered, "Little thing, if you can't change Toru Kamiya, then choose Arashi Kashiwagi." On the way home, Arashi's steps were heavy. He asked me whether I had been happy these last two years. I shook my head and said I did not know. Being with Toru made me happy, but I also knew that Toru was not really mine. After Sakura left, he lost all enthusiasm for theater. His poems no longer flowed with easy grace. He lived like a poet whose soul had already died. Gradually he began treating me with more and more rudeness, and still I clung to his side no matter what. One time Arashi saw me carrying lunch to Toru. The moment I set it down in front of him, Toru swept it all onto the floor. There were so many people in the cafeteria, all of them staring. I felt like the spilled food itself, something anyone could come step on. When Arashi came over, he grabbed Toru by the shirt and said, "Apologize to her right now." Toru only smiled carelessly. "So you get anxious too, Arashi." "Don't make me say it twice," Arashi said. More and more people gathered around us. I tugged at his arm and begged him to forget it, but Toru kept smiling. I had never seen that smile on his face before. It was disdain. It was contempt. Arashi snatched another dish from the table and slammed it into Toru's face. "If you ever treat Natsumi Asato like this again," he said, "I won't let you off." Instantly everything collapsed into chaos. People screamed. People shouted. The campus security office came and pulled Arashi away. I stood there crying in silence, then turned and left before Toru could see my face.

[IX] Only Experience Teaches You How to Let Go

I ran to the Coral Sea. I did not know why, at eighteen, I had to go through such strange things. All at once I missed Sakura so badly I could hardly breathe. I missed the way we had run together as children. I missed the years when we pasted candy wrappers on the window and sunlight came through in simple colors. When I looked back, I could no longer see that innocent childhood of ours. All the bonds we had once believed unbreakable had drifted farther and farther away in the course of this baffling growing up. I wanted only one thing: to cry with all my strength and commemorate the first true heartbreak of my eighteen years. I walked slowly into the Coral Sea. First the cold water touched my feet, then it rose and rose until it covered my whole body. I cried in the seawater, wanting all my tears to sink into that Coral Sea so I would never have to face the future again. When I woke, I was in Arashi Kashiwagi's arms, and his tears were falling straight down onto my neck. "Little thing, are you insane?" he was saying. "Why would you try to kill yourself?" How could I explain that I had not wanted to die, that I had only wanted to give all my tears to the Coral Sea so that after that I would never need to cry again? I reached up and touched the tears at the corners of Arashi's eyes. He was shivering in the wind with cold. "When I pulled you out just now," he said, "I was so afraid you wouldn't wake up. I was so afraid you'd never open your eyes again." Curled in his arms, I said, "Arashi, I'm awake. I really am." There are some people and some things that you can only understand after living through them. Only then do you learn what it means to let go. Standing there in the wind, I felt as though I had just awakened from a very long dream, a dream that held the boy I had loved, the first precious bond of my life, a childhood friend, and a love that had never actually left me. I had lost nothing, really. The only thing I had lost was an obstinate love that had never belonged to me in the first place. Perhaps learning to look at things with open hands is itself one way of being happy. Suddenly I realized I had grown up. It was a subtle, instantaneous kind of growth, as if I had been remade all at once.

[X] Happy Tears

After the university entrance exams, Arashi bought me a beautiful piece of coral and helped me set it on the bookshelf in my room. Then I got a call from Sakura. "Little thing, are you doing well?" she asked. Looking at Arashi standing in the sunlight, I answered, "Sakura, my happiness is always missing one part when you're not in it." Sakura laughed softly and said, "Little thing, did you know? When I was very small, I once read a line that said the Coral Sea is the sea of girls' tears. It keeps all of a girl's love and dreams. And when one day you've grown up and walk back to the Coral Sea again, you won't cry anymore. So even if I'm not by your side now, don't hold sadness in your heart. We shared a Coral Sea once. It's the proof of our happiness, and no one can take that away." Sunlight filled the room and warmed both Arashi and me, like a happiness that had arrived late but at last had come. I took my phone from my pocket and sent Toru Kamiya a text with Sakura's address and number in the other city. At the end I wrote: Let go, and go after the love that belongs to you. When I pushed open the window, the spring wind came inch by inch into my body, bright and warm like the first sunrise that rose each day over the Coral Sea.