Twin Planet

Kazufumi Asakura looked at me for a long time. When I didn't answer, he suddenly laughed. "So you can look frightened too? I always thought you met everything with a smile, bright and cheerful." So he was teasing me. I made a sound and pretended to be angry, walking out into the hospital garden. He chased after me and said anxiously, "Don't be angry. If you get angry you'll bring on an attack." "Who asked for your concern?" I snapped, sulking. I ran toward the gate, forgetting I was a patient. A spasm of angina made my face go pale. I didn't want Kazufumi Asakura to see it, and I was even more afraid he'd tell Sumino. I pretended I was fine and grabbed Sumino's bicycle to ride off on it. But the pain got worse. I crouched on the ground, drenched in sweat. Kazufumi hurried over, helped me into a nearby cafe, and made me swallow my pills. Blues music was playing in the cafe. From the moment we came in, he kept holding my hand, looking for the medicine, feeding me water, patting my back. I turned to look at his face. A fine wash of light fell from above across the deep planes of it, and a trace of worry showed on that sharply cut handsome face. Suddenly I felt sad. If I didn't have this illness, I could openly chase this boy as Futaba. I think I've started to like him. Not like those make-believe romances from before. This kind of liking means that as long as he's doing well, you are happy. Kazufumi picked up my medicine bottle and asked, "Why do you keep your pills in a vitamin bottle?" I snatched it back. "You're not my boyfriend. Why should I tell you?" He froze, and then his face went red again. He looked so cute blushing, soft and translucent like a persimmon. I stuffed the bottle back into my bag. Once the pain eased, I began eating the blueberry cake he had ordered for me, and I thought of Sumino. When she was little, on her birthday, Mom bought her a huge blueberry cake. Before she got home from school, I took it out of the refrigerator and ate it. When she came back and found the fridge empty, she pointed at me and yelled, "Futaba Nanase, you're awful. I don't like you at all." Sumino hates me so much, and I made it happen with my own hands. I always do things that make her hate me. Making her furious is what makes me happiest. While I was grinning from ear to ear, Kazufumi wiped the cream from the corner of my mouth. I looked at him and asked, "Senpai, do you like me?" He coughed, embarrassed. I said seriously, "You will. My name is Sumino Nanase." I took a firm sip of warm water. My skin must be thick; I didn't feel embarrassed or blush at all. After all, I wasn't Sumino Nanase. I was Futaba Nanase living behind Sumino Nanase's skin. I could say everything I wanted to say to Kazufumi Asakura and dump the awkwardness and responsibility on the real Sumino. Just as she says, I am selfish, false, and vain.

Futaba laid out another pile of vitamins and calcium tablets in a row on the glass table in her room. She was a little different today, quieter than usual. She changed out of her uniform in silence, hung it on the rack, then played with the twin necklace on the table. I don't know why, but every time she sees that necklace she grows very quiet, with a trace of sadness you can barely detect. I sat quietly in my own room, listening to Futaba next door. Ever since she moved into the room beside mine, I had formed the habit of listening through the wall. The wall is very thin, just a single plank. Futaba talking on the phone, singing, walking around, I can hear all of it clearly, even the sound of her pushing those vitamin pills across the glass tabletop as if she were washing mahjong tiles. Those sounds seem alive. Every time I hear them, my heart twists into a strange sea, as if those pills were carrying Futaba Nanase's life. Whenever I think that, my whole body trembles. I've tried asking Mom and Dad about it, but they always avoid the question. They only tell me again and again to be kind to Futaba Nanase, no matter how many bad things she does. How many bad things has Futaba done, really? Does tearing the dress I was meant to wear in a performance count? Does stealing and eating my birthday cake count? Does telling me I look like a resentful housewife count? Does smearing cream all over my face at my birthday party count? I put up with her. I always say I hate her. But do I really hate her that much? Why is it that every time I see her mischievous smile and her occasional sad look, my heart smiles and grieves along with her? Why is it that when she once came down with a fever at home, I took leave from school and cared for her around the clock? Futaba only minds her manners when she's sick; only then does she know how to be quiet. With those small ailing eyes she looks like some tame young fawn. Over these days I've remembered too many things about Futaba. I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Maybe once I put on Futaba Nanase's clothes, I start thinking the way she does. It's frightening. We'd switched identities for many days by then, and her face had gradually recovered. When we discussed switching back, she asked, "Sumino, do you really like Kazufumi Asakura that much?" The truth is, I really don't know whether I like Kazufumi or not. I met him during the school debate competition. His wealth of evidence and sharp rebuttals left the opposing side speechless, and I liked his calm composure. That was all. But then I suddenly thought of Hiroto Aihara, and I said to Futaba, "What kind of spell did you cast on Hiroto Aihara? No matter what I say, I can't make him go away." Futaba snickered beside me. "I honestly don't know. Maybe when he got knocked out in a fight, I dragged him to the hospital once, and he started liking me because he thinks I'm his savior. What, you think he's cute?" My face stiffened. "Don't be ridiculous. How could I possibly like some delinquent from your school?"

Futaba brought her face close to mine, as if trying to read the weakness in it, then smiled with meaning and said, "My dear sister, did that boy awaken your maternal instincts? He is pretty adorable." As soon as she finished, I made a move to hit her, and she flew off like the wind. Just then a text came in from Hiroto Aihara: Futaba, let's go see the anime expo tomorrow. He was the kind of boy who burned like fire. You could see joy and sorrow in his eyes far too easily. He liked fighting, liked smoking, didn't study, and yet there was always something hot-blooded and youthful about him, the way he looked at you with that blazing gaze.

After today, Sumino and I would switch back. A week of model-student life, no matter how stifling, was still about to become the past. I took stock of Sumino Nanase's life: she had no friends. She studied hard, the teachers liked her, and the other students kept a respectful distance. There wasn't a single manga hidden in her drawer, not a single bag of snacks. In her notebook she'd written that she wanted to get into Keio, and her name was always somewhere in the top three on the red honor board. She lived too high above the ground, with not a scrap of liveliness in her. So when I went there, I helped her botch a few idiotic exams, and I danced a sultry dance at the school's singing contest. The exam part was deliberate. The dancing really was just my specialty. It was supposed to be the school's annual singing contest, with every class sending one representative, but the only student in Sumino's class who could perform had lost her voice. The teacher had no choice but to recruit someone else, and everybody lowered their heads as if they hadn't heard a thing. Seeing the teacher cornered in embarrassment, I volunteered. Forgive me for wearing Sumino's twin necklace again. I'd forgotten to return it after the Halloween dance. Maybe that was selfishness on my part. I wore my favorite white chiffon dress, tied a rose-colored pleated sash around my waist, and put on my favorite ocean-blue makeup. Everyone was stunned. I saw Kazufumi Asakura's glasses nearly slide off his face. I sang and danced to A-Mei's "Fire." The audience of boys and girls and teachers and all the rest were wildly into it. My dancing had been taught by Jing'an's best dance instructor. Back at Mingyang I wasn't all that special, but at this experimental school, where studying came first and art ranked as zero, I stood out like a crane among chickens. When Kazufumi came up to give me flowers, I hugged him passionately for three whole minutes. He froze in embarrassment. The crowd below went wild. Later I heard that scene became a campus-news sensation. I called that day my madness after farewell. I dragged Kazufumi to the square to drive little go-karts. I tore around in mine like a lunatic. Kazufumi shouted, "Sumino Nanase, cut it out and get down from there." I ignored him and kept driving faster and faster. He stopped his own kart, ran in front of mine, and blocked me with his body. I had no choice but to climb down. "You're no fun," I told him. He answered, "I just don't want to be the one who has to take you to the hospital."

I told you before, don't mention my illness again. Say it one more time and we're finished. What I was really afraid of was that afterward he would let something slip. "Sumino Nanase, what are you so scared of?" he asked. "It feels like you're looking for death." I shoved him away and screamed hysterically, "You're the one who's dead. Even if you died eight times over, you still wouldn't come back to life!" I can stand it when I say the word death myself. I can't stand it when anyone else says it to me. Only after I finished shouting did I realize that I was already crying. I crouched there and wept in misery. No one knows how afraid of death I am. From the moment I learned I had heart disease, death began eating at me every day. That pain, like ants gnawing at your heart, is something no one can understand. I pretend to be happy, make trouble, fool around, only because I want to make myself a little happier. But that day, for reasons I couldn't explain, I wasn't happy at all. Kazufumi came over and held me gently. He said, "I really do feel sorry for you." In his arms I listened to his steady heartbeat, that normal, beautiful heart. It knew that I liked him. But it surely knew too that we could never be together. I thought of Sumino, and suddenly I laughed. "What are you doing?" I asked.

He looked at me in confusion. I tapped him on the head and said, "Idiot. At first I only wanted to make you feel sorry for me on purpose. Now that you've already fallen for me, I don't need to keep lying." "Really?" he asked, half doubtful. "Isn't my acting good? I think I could go into television." I got to my feet and said, "I'm leaving. You don't have to take me home today. Some other time, maybe." I ran several steps forward and then turned back. Under the brilliant star-filled sky he was standing there staring straight at me. No one else was driving the go-karts. They stood in neat rows at one corner of the square, melancholy and lonely. I waved to him and said, "Goodbye, Kazufumi Asakura. From today on, forget that I was ill. Never mention it again." Then I turned away. On the bus, tears suddenly surged out of me. I took the twin necklace off my neck and clutched it tightly in my palm. I saw Sumino's face, bright and pure beneath a clear sky. She could go on living and loving in my place. I had nothing left to regret.

The anime expo was the tail end of my time with Hiroto Aihara. After today I was going to say goodbye to this pile of children whose IQs were all ten and go back to study at a school full of geniuses with IQs of two hundred. Just thinking about it filled me with fighting spirit. For the last time, I studied the manga Futaba Nanase kept locked in her drawer. It was a comic called Twin Planet, and only the first volume was there. The story said that many people lived on Twin Planet, a place without conflict, sickness, or scheming. Everyone lived happily and simply, and so people outside Twin Planet were always searching for its direction.

I lay across Futaba Nanase's desk and thought. After school, YOYO told me that Hiroto Aihara was fighting with someone in a manga shop near school. I was furious. I thought, even on the last day he won't let me spend it peacefully; what on earth is he trying to do? So I rode Futaba's flashy white mountain bike there, and by the time I arrived his face was already so bruised and swollen it looked like a steamed bun. Without listening to a word, I exploded at him. "I told you not to fight, and you fought again. Are my words just wind to you? If one day someone beats you to death and has to send word to me, I'll die of embarrassment." After I had rattled on and on, the whole place went silent. Hiroto Aihara, with his face puffed up into a bun from being beaten, merely took a comic out of his jacket and held it out to me. "The second volume of Twin Planet. But the last two pages got torn up, and I can't find the pieces yet." He still had the nerve to joke. I took the comic, hauled him to his feet, and dragged him outside. "Futaba, are you mad at me? I didn't fight, I really didn't." I glared at him. "Your face is already a bun and you're still saying you didn't." I shoved him onto the front bar of the bike. Hiroto was tall and thin, scarcely any weight to him; people who didn't know better might have thought I had superhuman arm strength, the way I carried him on the bicycle. Sitting up front, he pretended to be delicate. "Futaba, this is terrifying. Slow down." "Terrifying my foot. Just last year alone you went to the hospital three times for fights, twice to emergency, and to the police station four times. Nine times altogether, big and small. You know how to be scared now?" I'd already dug up Hiroto Aihara's whole history. With YOYO, the queen of campus gossip, around, what news could possibly escape me? "Which proves I didn't fight today." "What kind of twisted logic is that?" "If I'd fought today, they all would've ended up in the hospital again." "You little brat." I smacked him on the head. He winced and twisted around to look at me. "I know this comic is important to you. You once said you wanted to buy it for someone very important." Someone very important? All at once I felt something odd inside that. Hiroto smiled. "Then you should ask yourself, shouldn't you? How would I know?" He was right. Only Futaba herself knew who that important person in her heart was, what Twin Planet had to do with my twin necklace, all of that. I bought gentian violet at the pharmacy to dab on Hiroto's face. I wouldn't take him to the hospital because I truly hated the atmosphere there. By the time I had turned his steamed-bun face into a purple bun, even I couldn't bear to look at it. To soothe him before he saw himself in a mirror, I even bought him a good milk tea. We never made it to the anime expo. Instead we sat in a square lined with go-karts, watching other people pop popcorn. "Futaba, your eyes, every time you lean on the school railing and look at the butterfly orchids outside, that hollow, drifting look in them makes people sad." "You understand me that well?" I asked. Hiroto shook his head. "No. I just think you aren't happy at all. You've done a lot of things that look happy, but except when you're reading Twin Planet and really smiling, every other smile you make looks helpless." I studied Hiroto carefully. He was only a year older than me, and yet so childlike. It was as if he had seen straight into Futaba Nanase's depths. Those were the details only someone who truly liked a person would notice, things I had never tried to explore or uncover, suddenly dissected before my eyes in a way too clear, too harsh. I decided to leave him. I waved and said, "Goodbye, Hiroto Aihara. If you like Futaba Nanase, then I hope you'll love her with your whole heart." On the bus, I opened the second volume of Twin Planet. People had always been searching for the coordinates of Twin Planet, but at the crucial point, two pages had been torn away. I sat on the cold seat, the comic held in my arms.

Mom and Dad came back from the country and asked how Sumino and I had been getting along. I said, as you can see, we were doing fine. I wanted to wear heavy makeup, paint my nails bright, and spend the rest of my seventeenth year looking beautiful. People say eighteen is a threshold. To me, seventeen is the best time of all, not too mature, not too childish, old enough to know when to advance and when to let go. That evening I took the twin necklace back to Sumino. When I pushed open her door, she was obviously startled. "Miss, could you knock before you come in?" "I did. You just didn't hear." I argued stubbornly. "All right, what do you want?" She was already used to my bullying. "Your twin necklace back." I held it out in front of her. She sat in bed against the headboard, wearing dark green cotton pajamas and clutching a heavy hot-water bottle, her legs stuck straight out like salted fish. Her complexion was as rosy as ever, but her eyes kept moving over me. There was investigation in them, as if she were trying to work something out. Her gaze made me uneasy, and I wanted to leave. But she stopped me and asked, "Where exactly is Twin Planet?" So she knew about Twin Planet. I laughed. "So even Sumino Nanase, who only cares about textbooks, reads manga now?" "I was just asking casually. Who said I liked it?" She casually picked up a classical-Chinese study guide from beside her and started reading. Stubborn Sumino, in any situation, even when she desperately wants to know something, she's too proud to flatter or lower her head. I went back to my room, put my own SIM card back in my phone, and as soon as I did, dozens of texts from Hiroto Aihara rushed in, most of them sounding like things lovers say to each other. It gave me a headache. I flopped onto the bed and wondered about Sumino's messages. Would Kazufumi Asakura be sending her one intimate line after another, enough to make her head explode? I put a pill in my mouth, jumped off the bed into the quiet night, and stood before the mirror. The Futaba in the mirror had a pale, waxy face. Without makeup, she couldn't hide the way her looks were fading day by day. Little by little she would grow ugly, wither instantly like a flower. I decided that I would live the next summer well, and then say goodbye to everyone.

From my side of the door I listened carefully to the sounds in Futaba's room. First she jumped onto the bed, then she started shaking her jar and dry-chewing the tablets with her mouth, making a sound like little stones knocking together. She hopped off the bed and walked around barefoot. After that everything went quiet again. Had she fallen asleep, or was she staring into some corner and thinking? I sat on the floor and took the manga out of my pocket, as if that thing preserved the only true and beautiful part of Futaba. After a week away, I went back to school at last. Everything there was the same except the way my classmates looked at me. Later, when I saw the footage of Futaba dancing in the singing contest and embracing Kazufumi Asakura on the school's break-time news, I understood. Making a spectacle like that was typical Futaba. I never imagined she would use my identity so recklessly. I felt mortified. I kept my head so low I wanted to evaporate on the spot. But then Kazufumi Asakura suddenly appeared at the door of our classroom and called my name. I didn't know whether to go out or not. When I reached the doorway, he held out a cup of warm milk. The way he smiled at me was full of tenderness. I truly had to admire Futaba. In just one week she had turned everything into the scene she wanted. In the eyes of teachers and classmates, Kazufumi Asakura and I had become the first openly in-love model students in school history. Because our grades were still excellent, the teachers didn't know what to say. Somehow Kazufumi became everyone's idea of my boyfriend. He walked home with me after school and came to my class to sit with me during evening study. Every time I spoke to him I did so cautiously, terrified of being found out. He kept bringing up a fireworks night, a night of an embrace, a go-kart night. Every time he mentioned those memories, his face was full of yearning, and I was terrified. I don't know how I got through that awful stretch of time. The only thing I could do was hide my panic beneath hard work and diligence. Whenever Kazufumi came to my house, Futaba always avoided him. Either she would turn her music up loud in her room, or she would go out to dinner with classmates. Sometimes I wanted to ask her how things were going with Hiroto Aihara, but the words died in my throat. Once Kazufumi said, "Sumino, your health is so much better now, but why has your personality changed too?" I asked, confused, "When was my health ever bad?" He looked embarrassed and said, "Forget I mentioned it. I know, you said before that I wasn't to bring it up." His words kept circling in my head. I thought about them on the way home, at school, everywhere, and still found nothing. In that foolish confusion, Futaba and I passed through the winter of 2005 and entered 2006. It was a year that went by unbelievably fast. We were racing through schoolwork and facing the pressure of our final year. I had no time to think about anything else, to do anything else. Even talking with Kazufumi was only ever a few hurried sentences. But in the summer of 2006, Futaba and I had the fiercest fight we'd ever had. And it was that time, and only that time, when I suddenly learned everything. Everything so terribly sad.

If you don't count time, it always seems to race by. More than half a year had passed since Sumino and I switched back. Throughout that half year I remained the most flamboyant girl in school, accepting flowers and gifts from boys, still clacking through the halls in towering heels. I was going to the hospital more and more often. The doctor told me to hurry up and be admitted; maybe my chances of survival would be better. I refused. I ran straight out of the clinic. I was so afraid of seeing Sumino's pity, of seeing the sadness in Mom and Dad's eyes. But Mom said that after this summer I had to be hospitalized and stop being willful. Two things changed in that time: first, I stopped fighting with Sumino; second, I became much kinder to Hiroto Aihara. If a boy could earn even Sumino Nanase's mercy, I couldn't keep treating him cruelly. If he lost heart because of me, my guilt would be too great. Over those months, Sumino and I went through a not-very-good New Year. I threw the dumplings Mom and Dad had wrapped out the upstairs window and ran downstairs to build a snowman until I nearly buried myself in it. They didn't know whether to scold me or pity me. I saw the tears Mom was fighting back, and Sumino's cold eyes. Perhaps before that, she'd begun to revise her opinion of me a little. After that, she went back to being the Sumino Nanase who hated Futaba. I liked her that way, and I liked myself that way. Things were going smoothly for Sumino and Kazufumi Asakura. She even brought him home several times, and Mom and Dad met him. Every time, I either stayed in my room with music on or went out to eat with classmates. I never let my eyes meet Kazufumi's. I was afraid, afraid he would recognize me, and afraid he wouldn't. So I could only hide. Then the worst thing happened: Sumino and I had a fight. It was during a day at the beach with YOYO, Hiroto Aihara, and people from the dance club. I was wearing a floral dress with a pretty bow in my hair, sandals swinging on my feet, light makeup bright on my young face. Hiroto and I drew a big heart in the sand. I sent him off to pick shells for me, and while I waited, I wrote words inside the heart with the sea wind blowing over me: Kazufumi Asakura. I'm not Sumino. I'm Futaba. I stared at them for a long time. When I was about to get up, I discovered that Kazufumi had somehow been standing behind me for who knows how long, his eyes red as he watched. It is frightening when a boy is truly furious. I hurried to scatter the words in the sand, but he said, "You don't have to. I know now. Futaba Nanase, you lied to me." I had no idea how he had come. Sumino was there too. Kazufumi turned on her and said savagely, "You sisters are both disgusting. You schemed together and tricked me. It makes me sick." I never knew someone as gentle and refined as Kazufumi Asakura could say the word disgusting. I saw Sumino standing there, crying bitterly. I wanted to explain for her, but Kazufumi stormed off. Sumino shouted at me, "It's all your fault, all your idea. You're a curse. I don't know why you ever came back. Why do you always have to make my life a mess? Are you happy now? Is this the ending you wanted?" I admitted I was wrong, but I still snapped back. "You're the useless one and you're blaming me? If you had any ability, you should have made him love the real Sumino Nanase, not the fake one." Furious, Sumino grabbed up sand and flung it at me. It got in my eyes. Half-blind, I groped for water to rinse them. Sumino had already run off. I touched the cold seawater and washed my eyes. When I looked up, all I saw was blue. The wide sea seemed large enough to hold all my sorrow and grief. I swam forward and entered the sea's embrace. At the center of the sea lay the place of Twin Planet, the place without injury, without betrayal, without birth, aging, sickness, or death. I wanted to leave my beauty behind in the summer of 2007 and never, ever grow old. They pulled Futaba's body from the water with a rescue team. Her slight body looked like a transparent cicada shell, as though it might drift away at any moment. The makeup was fading from her face, revealing great stretches of pale skin and lips turning blue. Only then did I understand that Futaba wore such heavy makeup to hide the growing pallor of her face and the purplish tint of her lips. Mom was weeping like a madwoman beside us. I stood there staring at the slightly swollen body before me, unable to connect it with the Futaba I knew, all colorful skirts and thick makeup and flying movement. Only then did I learn the truth: when we were born, Futaba had already been diagnosed with congenital heart disease. Back then Dad had wanted Mom to leave Futaba at the gate of an orphanage. In a rage, Mom took Futaba away for ten years. Ten years later she brought her back only because she wanted her to have the happiness of a family. That was why Mom let Futaba do whatever she wanted. From the very beginning, Futaba had known she would never live past eighteen. What a terrifying thing that is, to have the end of your life waiting at the height of eighteen. In Futaba's room I found a letter written to me in neat black ink on white paper. "Sumino Nanase, never be sad because of my death. From the first day I saw you when I was ten, I hoped you would always remain the calm and proud Sumino Nanase. Over all these years I have done many things that made you hate me, but I don't regret a single one. I stole your things because I wanted you to remember me. I always used words to sting you because I wanted you to hate me, so that if one day I left, you wouldn't be so sad. You would remember me as lively and cheerful and go back to the life you had before I came. Back then, you had a father and a mother, and you would think of me as an ugly dream. Believe me, Sumino Nanase: how I hoped you would never cry over my death, and yet how much I also hoped you would remember that you once had a younger sister named Futaba. She shared the same womb with you for nine months. Because you had each other, neither of you was ever a solitary egg. Twin Planet lies in the middle of the sea. Only two people walking together can reach it, and yet they must move away from one another, trusting the secret understanding in each other's hearts, before they arrive. And that twin necklace is the key to the gate of Twin Planet. I always believed we would be the two people in the manga who arrived there together. But now I have to go first. I'll wait for you on that planet. When that day comes, let's have no more quarrels and no more hatred. We can sleep in the same blankets, holding each other the way we did seventeen years ago in our mother's belly. I will call you big sister, and you will call me little sister."

I still hadn't cried. I remembered that every time Futaba fought with me, she would say, "Sumino, if you feel wronged, then cry. I won't laugh at you." I won't cry, Futaba. I stubbornly believed that if I didn't cry, you would wake up, keep mocking me, keep saying my temper stinks, keep telling me to die, keep calling me boring. Futaba Nanase, will you wake up now? Even if it's only to sit in front of me and eat the fried eggs you liked, complaining that my cooking is awful, or to lie in my quilt and count little sheep with me. I want to hold your hand, always cold through the years, and say this once: silly little sister, no matter how many bad things you've done, I have still loved you just as much, and deep inside that never changed. Futaba Nanase, if time turned back, I would not walk away from you. I would hold your hand tight and take you with me to happy Twin Planet.