Please Fix Mr. Beaver's Cavity

Some people pass through your life barefoot, smiling as they go. The time they stay is neither short nor long, but enough for you to have tasted happiness and pain, and to remember them for the rest of your life.

Kinmokusei Village was where I grew up. When I was seventeen, the thing Komatsu Morita said most often was, "Sota, why do people have to live so long? Long enough to use up all their strength, and still it doesn't end." Whenever he said it, he had a cigarette between his lips, his eyes narrowed, a little knot of fragility drawn between his brows. That was the year he suddenly grew his hair long, stayed out all night, and drank more and more heavily. I knew exactly why he had turned into that: Kiyoka Sawatari. As long as Kiyoka was still alive somewhere in this world, Komatsu would never truly want to die, so I never took his gloomy talk too seriously. The person I truly didn't dare look back on was Shuya Kanzaki.

Before I turned thirteen, Komatsu and I fought almost every day. One day he would kick me into the little river in front of the house; the next I would climb onto his roof and block up the chimney. The day my mother married into the Morita family, he wore a ridiculous side part and made faces at me, saying who would ever want an ugly thing like me for a little sister. I pounced on him without a word and knocked half a fang off one of his canines. From then on, we were mortal enemies. That only changed when Kiyoka Sawatari transferred into the village middle school. She stood in the classroom doorway in an elegant little dress, looking down on Komatsu and me as though we were two rude country children. And yet this very same city girl, with her nose tilted so high, made Komatsu fall in love at first sight and put the two of us on the same side for the first time in our lives.

That afternoon, Komatsu stopped Kiyoka on her way home and stammered out a confession. I was sweeping the sports field at the time. From a distance I saw him flashing those beaver-white teeth of his, and something inside me suddenly went haywire. My hand jerked, the broom flew out of it, and it hit Kiyoka right in the forehead. She ran off red-eyed to complain, and that evening the teacher disciplined both Komatsu and me together. But after that beating, we somehow ended up forming an alliance. Lying on his stomach, baring his teeth in pain, he tried to comfort me. "Stop crying. Once I win her over, we'll count this grudge settled." I couldn't laugh. My chest only felt so tight it hurt.

Later, Shuya Kanzaki took especially good care of me under the pretext of "repaying a life-saving debt," often taking me out to eat. He said there were two advantages to dining with me: first, watching me eat made everything look delicious, and second, taking me to all-you-can-eat places was the best bargain possible. But even when he confessed seriously that he liked me, I answered with cruel words. I pretended not to see the hurt in his face, because at that time the only person filling my eyes and my heart was still Komatsu Morita.

But I was not the one Komatsu loved. One sentence from Kiyoka Sawatari, "What you can give me isn't anything I want, and what I want, you can't give," shattered him completely. That night he drank himself senseless, leaned on my shoulder, and asked me over and over, "Sota, tell me, what does she want?" It was the first time I ever called him brother. I promised that the next day I would go and ask her for him.

Kiyoka only laughed when she heard. She said that Komatsu and I had both been born and raised in the mountains, and no matter how far we looked, all we would ever see were layers of mountain shadows, which was why we yearned for the world outside. She wasn't like that. From the day she was born, she had already had too much. And once the things in her hands began to slip away, what grew in her was no longer yearning but a kind of possessiveness so fierce it was almost vindictive. Then she said, "Stop pretending, Sota Morita. You love Komatsu Morita. Everyone can see it."

I couldn't say a single word in reply. If I couldn't even explain to myself the grievance, jealousy, and unwillingness inside me, what right did I have to judge the road Kiyoka wanted to walk? But in that moment I finally understood that some people's names are destined to be like cavities. Most of the time they stay hidden just fine. But the instant you touch them, they hurt.