After the Dream, We Finally Grew Up

Asakawa Shio's mother was a madwoman. That was the thing the whole town of Chosei spoke of in fear. The filthy woman would curse at anyone she met on the road and sometimes even seize fistfuls of dirt and stuff them into her mouth, chewing with relish. Because of her, Shio was almost every child's enemy back then. Even in class the teachers put her in the last row. She always carried a small water flask and a blue towel with her. The moment school let out, she would be the first to rush outside, run to where her mother sat on the ground beyond the school gate, and wipe the dirt from her hands over and over with the wet towel before leading her home. Every day those hateful boys trailed behind them shouting, "There goes Shio, taking the crazy woman home again." I used to follow at a distance and seethe. I wanted to run up and beat them all flat, but after taking a few breaths and judging the odds, I would lower my head in shame. I hated myself for being such a coward. Then one day, after enduring humiliation for too long, Asakawa Shio finally exploded. She spun around, glared at those boys, gave a great cry, bent down, and snatched up a stone from the roadside. She hurled it with all her strength. The boys scattered at once, but the stone came flying straight toward me and cracked against my head. In that instant the world went soundless. Three seconds of silence. I lifted my hand slowly, touched my forehead, then spread my palm before my eyes and saw it painted red with blood. The boys fled screaming, "Asakawa Shio hit somebody!" I held my arm stiffly in front of me, showed my two rows of white teeth, tried my best to smile at Shio once, and then I fainted. When I woke again, I was in the town clinic. The village doctor, whose skills were not exactly first-rate, had wrapped my head until it looked like a giant rice dumpling. Seeing me wake, my father sighed and thumped me on the head. "How did I ever end up with a son like this? Afraid of everything in the world, and of blood most of all." Then he turned to Shio, who stood there trembling and full of guilt, and said gently, "Xiao Xi, hurry home and cook for your mother. I'll look after Aoi. He's fine. He just faints at the sight of blood. A little rest and he'll be all right." I raised my aching head with effort and looked past my father's shoulder. Her tears were circling in her eyes, ready to fall at any moment. To prove how strong I really was, I even slapped my chest hard. Shio walked over, stopped half a step away, opened my hand, and tucked into it a handful of cherries, clear and red as jewels. I knew they came from the cherry tree in her yard. I had stolen some from it before. "Mom gave them to me after school," she said. Then she turned and started to leave. I do not know where the courage came from, but perhaps her thin and lonely back struck some nerve deep inside me. I leaped off the bed and shouted after her into the courtyard, "Asakawa Shio, if they bully you again, tell me and I'll avenge you!" My father flicked my bandaged head. "Avenge her with what? You already look like a pig's head yourself." But at that moment Shio cried. First her shoulders trembled with little sobs, and then she burst into loud, helpless tears. I went over to her, patted her shoulder, and said, "Don't worry, Shio. I've secretly learned the Invincible Sunflower Technique from television. They won't be able to beat me."

The first time I actually used that so-called Sunflower Technique in front of Asakawa Shio was two months later. By then the bad boys led by Feng Dalei had begun treating me as a thorn in the eye simply because I liked walking to and from school with her. They had even given me a nickname, calling me the crazy woman's son-in-law. On weekends, when there was no school, Shio liked to carry a huge basket to the railway by the edge of town and pick up the broken coal that fell off the train cars. "Summer is almost over," she told me. "Mom gets cold easily." I lifted my hands, blackened by coal dust, and pretended I was about to smear her face with them. She tipped her chin up at me. Her eyelashes were so long and curved that I could not bring myself to touch her. That was when Feng Dalei arrived, chin lifted high and full of swagger. "This coal belongs to my family," he said. "You're not allowed to pick it up." Dalei's father had contracted a little coal mine in town. The small trains loaded there and then headed for the harbor dozens of miles away, and because that stretch of rail was a junction where they had to slow down and turn, bits of coal often spilled off to either side. This shameless Dalei was now claiming even those scraps as his property. Shio ignored him, shouldered the basket, and took my hand to walk past. Dalei was not the sort of spoiled boy who could bear being looked through like air. He hurried after us, snatched the basket from Shio's shoulder, and dumped all the coal we had gathered so carefully onto the ground. I could not bear it. So I shouted, spread my arms in the pose of a martial-arts master from television, yelled, "Sunflower Technique..." and lowered my head, thrusting my backside and charging straight into him. Naturally the scene that followed looked nothing like the one in the television dramas where the great master sent clouds flying with one move. Dalei simply waved one arm and knocked me flat into the grass. Then he smirked and said, "Aoi, you'd better stop hanging around Asakawa Shio. Don't you know her mother is crazy?" Watching him swagger away, I wanted more than anything to turn into a wolfhound and bite him. Shio crouched and gathered the scattered coal back into the basket. She said to me jokingly, "Aoi, it looks as if your kung fu still hasn't reached perfection. Once it does, Dalei definitely won't be your match." The setting sun threw her shadow over the railway sleepers, breaking it into strips of sorrow whose source could not be traced. "Do you know," she said, "when New Year comes, Dad will be back from working away. Then no one will dare bully me anymore." Her father, who worked far from home all year round, existed in my childhood memory only as a blur. They said he worked himself half to death so his daughter could finish university and one day live a happy life like other children. He came home only at New Year, and as soon as the holiday ended, he left again. So the days Shio called safe amounted to only one month in every year. Still, even that one month seemed enough to make her feel content.

As we grew older, the children in town mocked Shio less and less, but my care for her never lessened. By then she had been admitted, through her excellent grades, to the only top high school in the city. My own score on the entrance exam was fifty points lower than hers, though luckily I still scraped over the line for the same school. The difference was that she entered the advanced class while I ended up in an ordinary one. On the day the acceptance notices came, her father returned from far away to celebrate. He bought her a beautiful flowered dress. I still remember how she stood before the mirror turning it over with delight, only for her mad mother to burst in from outside, snatch it away, and struggle to pull it over her own body while dancing around and laughing, "A dress, a flowered dress." Her father rushed in to take it back by force, and the woman immediately began to cry. She gave it over obediently and sat on the floor, gazing at her daughter with eyes full of longing, pitiful beyond words. Shio took the dress from her father's hands, sighed softly, crouched beside her mother, and placed it back in those hands. After that, whenever I went home on weekends, I often saw the woman wandering all over town in that dress. Dark trousers and jacket underneath, pale floral dress on top: she looked absurd, and yet strangely sad. In order to take care of her, Shio rode dozens of miles back from school every single evening. My father insisted that I should put my studies first and flatly refused to let me accompany her home every day. So after classes I stood at the third-floor window of the teaching building and watched her wheel her bicycle out of the shed below and hurry east. By then her hair had grown long, and a blue ribbon at the back of her head was tied in the shape of a butterfly, simple and plain, but unable to hide the youth that shone from every part of her. She once said to me, "Aoi, we've finally grown up. We finally have the strength to change the things that used to leave us helpless when we were children." She said it while picking bits of grass from her mother's hair. From then on, in her heart at least, no one would ever dare despise her mother again. "Aoi," she said, "maybe all of you look down on her, but she is still my mother. So no matter what happens in this life, I will stand beside her and protect her. I won't let anyone hurt her again." Back then I wanted to tell her that I had never looked down on Aunt Qu at all, and that from then on I would gladly stand beside her too, helping her protect that woman. But I said nothing. You know me. I have always been that cowardly. Sometimes, thinking back to those childhood years, Shio would smile without meaning to. She would rise onto her toes, part the hair above my forehead, and look at the faint scar there, the one that time had already begun to erase. Then she would blow lightly on it and ask with a laugh, "Aoi, you were so silly back then. The moment I bent down, everyone else ran away. Why were you the only one foolish enough to stand there?" Embarrassed, I would shake my head and answer lightly, "Because I was sure you wouldn't hit me." And that was true. I had stubbornly believed the stone in Asakawa Shio's hand would never land on my head. I thought that because I pitied her and liked her so much, she must like me too and could never bear to hurt me. I was wrong. I forgot that I had never once told her what I felt. How could she have known? Shio would smile faintly and ask, "If I gave you another chance, would you still choose to stand there?" I always nodded. "If you hadn't hit my head and made it bleed, how could I have gotten such delicious cherries? If not for that, how could I ever have gotten close to someone as wonderful as you?" My expression and my solemn nodding always made her burst out laughing. Then she would force herself to be serious and say, "Idiot, Aoi, there will never be another chance like that, because I will never throw a stone at your head again."

The first time boys from class came asking me about Asakawa Shio was in the first semester of our second year. By then the quiet, high-achieving girl had already been given the secret nickname Ice Beauty by the boys in school. I found that sort of thing both ridiculous and irritating. Once, while we were riding our bicycles home to Chosei on a weekend, I tested the ground a little. "Shio," I asked, "if there were a boy secretly in love with you, what would you do?" She paused for the smallest instant, then smiled and replied, "The boy you mean isn't you, is it?" Even though I was not talking about myself, my face still turned red. I pedaled hard and left her far behind, shouting over my shoulder, "Of course not, Asakawa Shio. I mean somebody else." By the time we reached the town entrance I had finally calmed down. I put one foot on the ground and waited for her to catch up, then tried to sound casual. "You never answered me just now." She acted as though she had not heard a word and flew right past me on her bicycle. It was only a very, very long time later that she told me that if I had admitted, back then, that the boy who secretly liked her was me, she might actually have considered becoming my girlfriend. But by then, those simple and beautiful years had already gone so far away they could never be called back.

Around that time, Shio's mad mother had worked out exactly when her daughter came back through the town entrance each afternoon, and from then on she would begin waiting there at noon every day. Every time, Shio would scold her with the pretend sternness one uses on a child, telling her not to come anymore, and every next time she would be waiting there again without fail. What was strange was that Dalei also changed. He never openly mocked the madwoman again. Instead he became a frequent visitor to Shio's home. He drove a blue mini-truck and delivered watermelons to cool them through the summer, all kinds of seasonal vegetables, even a whole truckload of broken coal. The day Shio and I ran into him outside her house, he was unloading a rattan rocking chair from the back of the truck. When he saw us, he scratched his head awkwardly and said to Shio in a foolishly shy voice, "Xiao Xi, when we were kids, none of us knew better. Only now do I understand that people from the same town ought to help one another." Before she could answer, he had already jumped back into the truck and driven away with a roar. Days passed in that same simple stillness. Back then I had once believed, in all earnestness, that once Asakawa Shio finished university she would definitely end up with me, because in the whole town there was not one person better suited to her. But reality proved once again that I was wrong. When we are lost inside our own wishful thinking, we forget that there is always one thing behind us, stronger than all our strength, something we can never change no matter how hard we try. That thing is called fate.

The day something happened to Asakawa Shio's mother was in the second half of our final year. Because Shio had to prepare for the university entrance examinations, she had begun living at school during the week and going home only on weekends. To take care of Aunt Qu, she had called her father home. Yet her mother, not understanding any of it, still went every day to wait at the town entrance for her daughter. That was how the accident came. Shio and I were sitting in the crowded school cafeteria when her chopsticks suddenly slipped from her fingers. "Aoi," she said, "why does my heart feel so uneasy?" I remember it clearly because I laughed at her for overthinking. Then she shot to her feet and ran like a mad person toward the bicycle shed. By the time we reached the town entrance, breathless, her mother was nowhere to be seen. The auntie who sold popsicles there told us that Aunt Qu had just been hit by a car and that Shio's father had already taken her to the hospital. So we jumped back on our bicycles and pedaled as hard as we could. In the hospital's long and gloomy corridor, Shio's father sat in a corner seat with his head in his hands, crying. When he saw his daughter, he slapped his own face wildly and blamed himself. "The doctor says your mother's injuries are very serious. She's still unconscious. If they don't do a craniotomy at once, she may not live." Shio dropped to one knee on the floor and seized his hand. "Then do the surgery. Why aren't they doing it?" I stepped forward and rested my hand on her shoulder, trying to comfort her. Her father raised his head through tears. "I want to," he said. "But it's too expensive. Even if I use all the money set aside for your schooling, we're still more than eighty thousand short." When she heard that, Shio sank to the floor in a daze. Seeing her like that, her father began haltingly, "Xiao Xi, your mother's head was never right. Living is suffering for her anyway, and those funds were for your schooling..." He never finished. Shio cut him off violently. "No. She's my mother. I have to save her." Then she jumped up, wiped the tears from her face with one rough swipe, and ran for the door. She went past me shoulder to shoulder so hard that she almost knocked me down. I comforted her father as best I could and then went out after her, riding all over the town in search of her without success. When I came back to the hospital that afternoon, I was told that the deposit for the operation had already been paid. The man who paid it was none other than the owner of Dalei Feng's mine. Dalei himself was sitting outside the operating room beside Shio. I saw him place a peeled banana in her hand with those coal-black fingers of his. She turned slightly away and tears ran down her face. I had always despised Dalei, but in that moment I had to look at him differently. I had never imagined that when it mattered, he might still have some conscience in him. I walked over softly, sat down beside Shio, and patted her shoulder. "Don't be sad, Xiao Xi. The surgery's underway now, isn't it?" She did not answer. I turned to Dalei and said, "Thank you." He only smiled carelessly, took a crumpled cigarette from his pocket, and lit it. "No need to thank me, Aoi," he said. "I didn't do it for you." Before I could say another word, he was already up and walking away into the dim corridor until he vanished from sight. Just before he disappeared, he threw one sentence back over his shoulder. "Xiao Xi, if you need anything in the future, come to me. From now on, we aren't outsiders." I sat with Shio a long time in that corridor until the sun set and the sky changed color.

In the days before the entrance exams, Shio moved into the hospital ward to take care of her mother, who remained unconscious after the operation. Whenever I went to see them, her face was dark with worry. To comfort her, I put on a light tone and said, "Shio, your grades are so good that even if you don't review during this stretch, you'll still get in." She never responded directly. I told myself it was because she was too worried about her mother. But what I never expected was that on the day of the exam, Asakawa Shio did not show up. I only learned afterward why. Her mother had stopped breathing forever at eight o'clock on the morning before the exam. And yet that should not have been a reason. It should not, could not, must not have been enough to make her abandon the exam, abandon her dream, erase her future. Later, when I found her in that broken-down house of hers, she was kneeling before the madwoman's memorial photograph without saying a word. I should have shouted at her until my throat tore. I should have charged in like a bull full of madness and smashed everything to pieces. But I did not. I only stared at the dullness in her eyes, lowered my head slowly, and asked, in a quiet voice, "Asakawa Shio, why didn't you take the exam?" Her smile was strained and desolate. "Aoi, don't you understand? None of it means anything anymore." She said, "I tried so hard, so desperately, to change the way we lived. But now suddenly none of it means anything." "Shio," I said, "I know your mother's surgery failed, and I know you're hurting. But just because she's gone doesn't mean everyone has left you too. You still have your father. You still have me." There was a brief silence. Then I laughed bitterly and said, "So in the end, the only one you ever cared about was that crazy mother of yours." It was the first time in front of her that I had used the word crazy for that woman. I thought she would leap up and slap me. But she did not. She only stood there, head lowered, without speaking a single word. That frightened me more than any slap could have. I caught her by the shoulders and said, "It's my fault, Shio, my fault. Missing the exam isn't the end of the world. There are other chances. Even if you never go to university, I'll still like you. I'll still want you to be my girlfriend. Shio, don't be like this. Please."

I had not even finished when Dalei Feng came out from the back room. It looked as if he had been helping Shio's father tidy up her mother's things. He walked toward me expressionlessly, knocked my hands from Shio's shoulders, and then put a hand on my shoulder and dragged me outside. He lit a cigarette, blew out a long stream of smoke, and said earnestly, "Aoi, what can you possibly give Asakawa Shio? Why should she be your girlfriend? To tell you the truth, when my father lent them the money to save her mother, she already agreed to become the Feng family's daughter-in-law." Then he laughed and added, "You really think there are free lunches in this world?" I lost my mind and threw myself at him. We fought wildly, both of us bloodied. When I saw my hands once more streaked red, I thought I would faint like I had as a child. But I did not. I only got up again and again and hurled myself back at him. Then Shio rushed between us, planted herself in front of me, and said expressionlessly, "Don't hit my boyfriend." In that instant I froze. I knew full well she was protecting me, because if things went on like that I would never be the one coming out ahead. I knew she did not say it willingly. Still, she had said it plainly enough: Dalei Feng was her boyfriend. The sun overhead was huge and dizzying. So I could only turn slowly around and walk out through her yard before the tears had time to fall.

Those short two months of summer vacation felt as long as years. During that time Dalei Feng drove his little truck to the Qu house again and again, bringing coal, timber, and everything needed to repair the broken-down old home. By the day school began, the whole thing looked settled as naturally as if it had always been meant to happen. Shio did not come to see me off that first day back. I told myself perhaps that was for the best. By then our relationship had developed to such a point that even if we met again, there would be nothing left to say. And yet I still remember her as she once was. I remember the ragged yard with its thick cherry tree. I remember the little girl with two ponytails standing beneath it, looking up at me as I clung to the branches like a monkey, holding up the hem of her shirt to catch every cherry I tossed down to her. Her eyes back then were full of hope. "Brother Aoi," she once said, "you're the only one in town who's kind to me. From now on, the cherries from our tree are only for you." Another time she asked me, "They all call you the crazy woman's son-in-law. Are you angry?" Dear Asakawa Shio, if it was always your fate to bow your head before destiny, if it was always your fate to cover over every spark of light in your eyes, then may your soul grow as flat and quiet as everyone else's, so flat that one day you no longer even remember that you once had dreams.