Chronicle of the Blue-Orchid Boy

The skewers seller had fallen beside his charcoal brazier, and the coals at the roadside were still hissing out smoke.

From time to time the light would flash into my face, and I would have no choice but to turn and look out the window. In the pale green glass your blurred reflection hovered there, smiling now and then. You were different from the others. You liked black cotton dresses, plain and lonely. Your long black hair always fell loosely along the right side of your face. You never bothered to dress yourself up. People say that girls who don't like looking in mirrors are either extremely confident or desperately insecure. I thought you had to be the first. In the deepest part of my heart, you seemed flawless. I was wrong. In the second week after you transferred into our class, my sworn brother Shun leaned in and whispered, "Kei Akiyama, do you know why Akina Hayashida transferred here? She got expelled from her old school. Three months ago she grabbed another girl and jumped from the fourth floor with her. Lucky for her the other girl only broke a bone, or she'd have had to face legal trouble." I glanced sideways at you and could not connect you with the person he was describing. Seeing I didn't believe him, Shun even thumped his chest and swore it was true. If I'd happened to have a compass in my hand, I would've stabbed him in the backside without hesitation.

During break, in that noisy classroom, the girls were always pulling exquisitely made little mirrors out of the hidden compartments in their schoolbags, wallets, or pencil cases. And it turned out Shun was right. A few days later the rumor was raging through the whole school. That was the first time I saw you lying facedown on your desk. I couldn't see your expression or hear a sound, but your shoulders were trembling slightly. I rolled up my workbook into a tube and tapped your right hand gently. "Hey," I said, "don't mind what people say. They're making things up." You lifted your head very slowly. We looked at each other for a long time. Then you suddenly swept your heavy bangs aside and leaned close enough for me to see. On the right side of your forehead, near your hairline, there was a dark red scar about two centimeters long. My heart hurt at once. Later you told me with a smile that the rumors were all true. The scar on your forehead was what you'd gotten when you leaped from the fourth floor with that girl in your arms. Your smile was a mask, trying to hide grief that looked as though it had already passed, just like those thick, long bangs trying to bury the past.

You came slowly over to me, crouched down, and watched me with your chin in your hands. Your eyes were so large, your black pupils bright as stars, reflecting the far-off light. "Why did you stand up for me?" you asked. When you spoke, your whole head bobbed a little with the movement of your chin, and you looked oddly playful and cute. I didn't know how to answer. When I stayed silent, you stopped asking. You went and sat on the grass beside me, bracing yourself with both hands behind you, and tipped your face up toward the sky. "You know, Kei Akiyama," you said, "some people always pretend to be strong in front of everyone else, but inside they're hurting terribly."

Later Shun made peace with me on his own. "Didn't know you had such special taste, Kei Akiyama," he said. After that he never used those filthy words in front of you again. I remember that once the three of us went to the barbecue stand by the school gate and ate skewers together. He said to you, "Akina Hayashida, you give off too much of an outsider vibe. You ought to drop that ice-cold act and mingle with the working people. That's the only way anybody's going to understand you." He'd had a lot of the cheap draft beer they sold in giant two-yuan cups, so his words came out drifting through mist. He even said he knew you liked me, but that didn't mean the whole school knew it. In everybody else's eyes, it was only Kei Akiyama secretly pining after Akina Hayashida while Akina Hayashida was still hung up on her old lover. "You can't blame them," he said. "Jumping off a building is the kind of thing people don't forget quickly." Under the table I kicked him hard, again and again, and then you laughed. "Really, Shun?" you asked. "How did you figure out I like Kei Akiyama?" Shun didn't answer. He simply flopped facedown on the filthy table and fell asleep. After nine, the little town grew quiet. That night the two of us put one of his arms over each of our shoulders and staggered crookedly home with him. Once we got him back, I wanted to walk you home too, but you said you had no home. You said your home had fallen apart seventeen years ago. In a voice full of self-mockery, you said your father's bed was occupied by another woman now, and if a boy escorted you back at that hour, that woman would surely say the ugliest words in the world. Of course, the girl who could say such filthy things was the other daughter. And so, on a night when even the stars had gone to sleep, the two of us sat by the fountain in the empty square and became bad children who didn't go home. I remember it clearly: a mosquito bit your smooth calf and left behind a bump shaped like a cloud. Just before dawn I asked you about that girl. Sleepily, you told me that a few months earlier, she was the person you had jumped from the fourth floor with. "She's my sister," you said, and then you fell asleep on my shoulder. I could feel your breath at the skin of my neck, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, whether to circle your waist lightly or brace them behind me against the cold cement just to keep my balance.

When I saw you again after those three short years, you had become somebody else. Without the white ghost costume and twisted mask, you looked clean and handsome. When we came out, even Mio pinched my waist and complained that I should have introduced such a handsome guy to her sooner. We had been apart for a full three years. I'd imagined our reunion countless times. I thought I'd grab you and demand to know where you'd been, or else say nothing and throw myself into your arms and cry, scolding you for vanishing and leaving me to taste loneliness all those years. But when the day finally came, I was like an idiot. I couldn't cry. I couldn't smile. I only followed behind you. We walked and walked along the river until the night deepened and the riverside lights came on one by one. Only then did you say that on the morning of your second year of middle school, you hadn't gone to school either, so you hadn't known my parents had taken me away. From Shiomi to Yokohama, I cried for four straight hours in the car. We had no phones back then, no internet. Losing each other was ridiculously easy. In the first New Year after that, my father brought Grandma to Yokohama too, and for half a year every letter I wrote to you sank like a stone into the sea. "I got one of them," you said suddenly. "Only one. I snatched it from a punk. That was when I found out every letter you'd sent had been secretly opened and destroyed to get back at me." "So that was it," I murmured. You turned to look at me, your eyes soft and deep. Before we parted that night, you wrote me a number and told me I could call at any time, especially during thunder and lightning. I nodded and suddenly felt that the night was truly beautiful. The next morning at school, Mio pulled me aside and asked in a conspiratorial whisper, "Come on, be honest. Who was that handsome guy yesterday? What's he to you?" I shot her a look. "Do you know how ugly you are when you gossip?" "Please. Kei Suou bribed me with breakfast, all right?" she said, making it sound as though he'd forced the food down her throat. "He's liked you for two years already."

"Wait," I said, and then ran off.

What I had wanted to say was this: what are two years? I've had twelve with you. Of course I was too embarrassed to say it. At noon I only asked Mio to cover for me, then skipped out and ran to the haunted house at Harbor Amusement Park, meaning to surprise you.

In the end I had no choice but to find a public phone booth and call you.

It took you more than an hour to reach my school gate. To make up for it, you took me to eat nearby. The name of Fruit Lake High as a school for the rich wasn't for show. It wasn't just full of the sons and daughters of city and provincial officials; even the restaurants and boutiques around it were done up with the same gleaming luxury as a commercial district.

When we were ordering, I didn't notice the look on your face. As always, I picked a few of my favorite dishes, which were also the restaurant's specialties. "You really do have good taste," I said. "How did you know at a glance that I come here all the time?" You smiled without quite smiling. "Do I?"

To be honest, the way you wolfed your food down was adorable too. After seeing boys like Kei Suou eat with perfect refinement for so long, I found you almost irresistible.

You didn't even dare raise your eyes to me. There was an embarrassment on your face I had never seen before. In that instant I suddenly understood, and then my hand went into my bag and found it empty. You lifted your face like a prisoner stripped for public humiliation and said, "I'm sorry."

"You're eating this early? That's not like you." When he saw me running over, Kei Suou, with his one-strap schoolbag over his shoulder, looked puzzled. "Can you lend me a hundred?" I asked without preamble. "What for?" "What do you care? Saving a life is better than eating seven grapes. Come on, hurry."

"You're hopeless. You even forgot your wallet." He scolded me in that good-tempered way of his. "Thanks." I snatched the money and ran back to the restaurant to pay. But I never expected that as soon as you stepped outside, the only thing you would say to me was, "Nene Sakuraba, we really shouldn't see each other anymore." The smile froze on my face. We had been apart for three whole years. I thought that in our reunion, you would be as astonished, grateful, and happy as I was. Instead you threw down that cold sentence and disappeared from view, your back so resolute it hurt to look at. That was when I realized my absence from your life had not been a handful of days, but three long years, each three hundred and sixty-five days in length. Later Kei Suou gripped my shoulders in pain. "What is it you even like about him? He can't pay for one meal for you. What can you expect him to give you? You know I've liked you for two whole years, Nene Sakuraba. I can give you the best of everything." The best of everything? I raised my head and looked at him with a cold smile, this boy who wore nothing but designer labels and had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth. If I didn't look like this, if I wasn't wearing a pretty dress, if I were standing in an alley after being robbed by a gang of punks and shoved into the mud, dirty all over, would you still say that to me? Would you still like me? Perhaps because he had never seen me like this before, Kei slowly released my shoulders and stared at me in confusion. The best thing in the world, for me, was what I had already lost for three entire years, and I was going to get it back. I'm sorry, Kei Suou, I said in my heart, and turned into the elevator. At the height of the twenty-fifth floor, the wind rushed in through the window and brushed my face as gently as you once had.

Have you ever had a day when the whole world went dark? From that day on, I decided I would be with you. In truth, long before that, I already felt we were the same kind of people. Neither of us had our parents' love. Neither of us had enough of a sense of safety. I still remember how, in the restaurant, you counted one crumpled bill after another in front of the waiter, and your hand trembled slightly. After that, none of my calls to you ever went through again, and I started cutting class to look for you everywhere. I was still five months shy of adulthood then. But from Shiomi to Yokohama, I had already come to understand what I wanted most. You know what Yokohama summers are like? Brutal sun, heavy rain. Even when the thunder crashes here, the power no longer goes out. Even in a storm, the water in this apartment complex never rises past your knees. Over the years I collected countless flowered dresses and more spending money than I could use, but there was still a huge hole in my heart, and on nights of thunder and lightning I needed a pair of arms to fill it. Anyone who hasn't lived through it will never understand that what I wanted wasn't luxury and comfort. What I wanted was simply someone who would stay beside me through such a night, and that meant more than anything else. Maybe I skipped too many classes. The school finally called in my parents. In front of all the teachers and students, my father slapped me hard across the face. By then I was numb. In truth, over the years I had spent very little time with them. In my memory, my father didn't pat my head kindly; he slapped me hard. My mother was always glamorous and beautiful. She only bought me expensive clothes and, now and then, pinched my face gently. Do you believe me when I say that all these years, you were the only person who ever held me the way you did? Later I would wrap my own arms around myself and close my eyes, pretending it was you. I loved that kind of tenderness too much, the warmth passed through bodies pressed close enough for heartbeats to travel. I will never forget it in this life. No matter how long it takes, no matter the cost, I will give everything to find you. That was what I told Kei Suou when he dragged me down while I was brazenly trying to climb the wall and skip class again. I thought he'd conclude I was hopeless. Instead, he wanted to make a deal. He said he'd help me find you and use every power he had, on the condition that I stop cutting class and become his girlfriend. His father was a city official and his mother owned a hotel, so I suppose he took after her, even in love he used business methods. But I agreed without hesitation. Agreeing was no more than nodding my head. Three months later, he really did find you in a bar. In my excitement I linked my arm through yours and joked to him that if he didn't become a private detective, it would be a waste of talent. His face turned green with rage. He grabbed my arm and asked, "Ning, what about what you promised me?" I turned away from him and looked only into your eyes. Who says young love lacks courage and blood? Because you have no scruples, because the years stretch ahead, because the future is unknown, even blindfolded you dare fly forward at all costs. Even if you break your head, even if you end up covered in wounds, you won't let go. You stubbornly believe that once two hands have met, they will stay together. That day I dragged you to the mall and bought two new matching Nokia phones. You stared at me in shock. "Don't think about anything. Just remember that I want to be with you. All right?" I said it in your arms with tears in my eyes, even as I could already picture my parents' fury when they discovered that several thousand yuan in cash had vanished from the house. What I really wanted to tell you was that I wasn't afraid of anything as long as you were beside me. But in the end I was still dragged back. They took the phones, and they took every bit of money I had. I also saw my father land a savage slap across your face. You didn't dodge at all. That powerless, fragile look in your eyes wakes me from dreams even now. You were so foolish. You still naively thought they were only worried you couldn't make me happy. In truth, they were only worried we would become an indelible stain on their lives. The moment my father called you a beggar, I understood that in his eyes I too was only a daughter who begged from him every day. I saw you again after I escaped from being locked up for a week. At the construction site, your arm had been smashed by falling stone. It hung in a cast across your chest like a rice dumpling.

And still you smiled, narrowed your eyes, and asked me, "Nene Sakuraba, if I lose my hand one day, will you still like me?"

That day I went with you to the legendary Rokkakutei. In Yokohama, when people want to call someone insane, they say he came out of Rokkakutei. Only after we got there did I understand why. A doctor led us to the fifth floor. Along the corridor were railings, locked doors, and rooms from which strange cries kept drifting out. At last you stopped outside room 506. Through the window I saw a woman with a shaved head inside. In an instant you burst into tears. "Mom, I've come to see you." Later you told me that the day I left Shiomi was also the day you agreed to let your aunt send your mother to the Yokohama psychiatric hospital. You told me too that you had meant to come back and tell me that from then on I wouldn't have to worry about being hurt by your mother when I visited. You never imagined that I would leave you on the very same day. As you said those things, I held you with all my strength and told you I was sorry. If I had known, I said, I would never have left that little town in this lifetime. I cried uncontrollably in your arms and, slurring my words, told you firmly that even if you lost everything else, you would never lose me. Your lips trembled, and at last you promised that from then on we would never part again. On the hospital roof, our fingers hooked together, and I naively believed that was what a vow for life looked like. But reality was a net. Our thin wings could not break free of it. They could only fall into it.

And then came the night when I could no longer sing and tell you that you were mine. My parents were both at home for once. The lights burned all night. My father smoked until cigarette butts covered the floor, and my mother shed a few tears. At last I nodded hoarsely and called Kei Suou. "Please, do me a favor." He had probably never heard me speak in that tone before, because he came at once. Without a word, I dragged him into my room, handed him a slip of paper, and said, "Read these lines once. Just like this." Then I bit down hard and pressed the record button. Afterward I gave him the recorder and told him that no matter what, he had to play it for you. That night the only thing spinning through my head was the investigation my mother had ordered into you. I had thought that your haunting work in the ghost house, your hauling bricks on construction sites, your inability to pay my bills, all came from genuine desperation. The truth was otherwise. You had never told me what kind of bargain existed between you and the aunt who insisted on sending your mother to the psychiatric hospital. It was those papers and photographs that let me understand that the reason you had reached such desperation, the reason your life was so trapped, was me. Because of me, you sent your mother to that place that was no place for a human being. Because of me, you refused your aunt's promise that if you put your mother into the hospital, she would not only pay the medical bills but also cover your schooling and even your entire future.

And still because of me, after graduating from Shiomi High, you came to Yokohama. You were only eighteen then and already so stubborn. No matter how many times your aunt came looking for you, you refused to go back to her. Perhaps you saw her help as alms, but I know that the reason you chose Yokohama was only to search for me. Otherwise how could your eyes have filled with the urge to cry the moment you took hold of my hand in the haunted house? Do you know what happened when I learned the truth? I fell apart. When I stole money from home to buy you a phone, when I took you to expensive restaurants, when I bought you clothes and dressed you up to look handsome, I thought I was doing good for you. I even thought I was saving you, protecting you, when I paid your hospital fees, just as you had once protected me. I believed that in this cold city, only I could save you, take you away from dust, filth, stale meals, threadbare clothes, and a humble life. I thought that as long as you had me, you would live better. Only now did I understand that the one who had left you in that dust and dirt, who had made you endure contempt and ridicule, was me. How could I possibly be at peace with that? How could I bear it? Then perhaps only if I vanished could I truly protect you. But my dear Suwa, can you forgive me?

I cannot guess what expression you wore in the end. Kei Suou told me that while you listened to the recording, you only stared blankly at the phone, the Nokia worth four thousand yuan, the most expensive gift I had ever given you. Fighting back tears, you said to Kei, "Nene Sakuraba is most afraid of nights with thunder and lightning. Even if she never says it, if you hold her, you'll feel her shaking. So no matter what, please stay by her side." Then you fled in a panic. But do you know this? When I heard Kei repeat those words, all I wanted to tell you was that in this life I wanted only your embrace, only your warmth. And what I regret most is that I never got to tell you that I had loved you for twelve entire years. Twelve years. Later I would feel so grateful that our memories had lasted that long, because only something that long could sustain the rest of my life.

After that, I really never saw you again. Sometimes I still press play and listen to the words I forced myself to say through tears. "Jingnian, I'm really tired. I've given him so much money and he still sits in front of me eating cheap roadside fried rice. Every time I smell it on his breath, I want to vomit." Then comes Kei Suou's voice: "Nene Sakuraba, I told you long ago, he and you belong to two different worlds. Remember? You used to think boys with black dirt under their nails were disgusting." Whenever it reaches that point, I slam the stop button, then hurl the recorder away. It arcs through the air from the twenty-fifth floor in one perfect curve. No one understands you better than I do.

With your fierce pride, how could you have endured my looking down on you? How could you have endured learning that in my eyes, the word disgusting had once described you? But do you know this? Every time I saw both your hands covered in dust, every time I saw thick calluses grow on your fingers, split and bleed, heal, and then be wounded again, over and over, my heart broke for you. You never wanted my money. You accepted the phone because you wanted to stay in touch with me whenever you could. You wore the clothes I bought because you didn't want to look too shabby walking beside me. You came with me to expensive restaurants because you were afraid that taking me to the stand by the station would make me feel wronged. How could I not understand that? Even two years later, when I came across an expensive but highly praised online shop that specialized in Korean designer bags, I recognized you at once from the introduction. In the last line you had written that you once loved a girl deeply, but because you couldn't even buy her a single bag, you left in despair. Now you owned this shop, but that girl would never come back. My heart shuddered. Every word had become the reflected light of time, melted into the pure white years of my youth where they could never be separated from me again. Yes. Yes. That was the final line on the recording too. You can't even buy me one bag, so what kind of future can you give me? In the manga cafe, amid the noisy crowd, I could bear it no longer. I turned away and let tears run down my face. Then I remembered what you once said to me, that you wanted to be a man who kept his promises like your father, that once you loved a girl, you would treat her well for a whole lifetime. I hadn't believed you then. I even laughed that you'd learned sweet talk. Later you told me that it was because when your father swallowed his last breath, he apologized to your mother for not being able to walk with her to the end. From that day on, you had made up your mind to be like him: once you chose someone, it would be for life. But who was it you loved in the years that followed? Whoever she was, I think she must have been very happy. As for me, at a worn-out nineteen, my life was filled with memory. After you left, there was never again anyone in this world who could bring me joy and sorrow the way you did. You will also never know that I went back to Shiomi. Sunlight poured like water through the dusty room, over the creaking wooden staircase and the moss-covered walls. But I was no longer afraid, not even when alone in a night full of thunder and lightning, because you once told me that it was a great firework display, and that to witness it at all was a kind of luck.