If you ever see a girl with a head full of curls riding a bicycle at a lazy pace, with a whole gang of girls behind her deliberately slowing down their little scooters to match her speed, and then watch her hop off the bike, park it carefully, and stroll over to tell you that she is Sister Zero, the famous girl boss of the area, then don't be surprised. Natsukawa Shiori is exactly that kind of impressive woman.
In truth, Natsukawa Shiori had never meant to gather followers or join any sort of gang. From elementary school through middle school, she had always been the model child, studying dutifully, doing all the things good students are supposed to do. The only thing even a little unusual about her was that she was always alone.
She moved through the world by herself. Unlike the girls in class who liked to go to the restroom in groups, Natsukawa Shiori ate alone, went to school alone, came home alone, read alone, studied alone. Even when she made cheat sheets for exams, she made them herself and copied from them herself, self-reliance at its finest. She did badly on the high-school entrance exam and ended up at a third-rate high school. To her, first-rate and third-rate were separated by only two little "rates," but her mother beat her chest over it for an entire summer. What Shiori never expected was that at the start of school, because she couldn't stand watching an enormous girl bully another girl who was rumored to steal things, because slapping someone over and over and kicking her in the stomach was just too much, she stepped forward and said, "Do you have to bully her like that?" The result was that Natsukawa Shiori got into a fight with the fat girl and somehow won.
That was how Natsukawa Shiori, completely against her will, became a big shot. The girl who had always kept to herself suddenly became Sister Zero, with people following her wherever she went, and it took her a long time to adjust to that change. She met Ezaki after she'd been called Sister Zero for about a month. Ezaki was an honors student from the high school next door, the legendary first-rate school. She had seen him in uniform before. He looked good in it. Mostly because he himself was good-looking: straight-backed, long-fingered, with a pair of especially beautiful eyes, like stars in the sky, like a winter lake filled to the brim. Eyes that could have been gentle as water and yet insisted on being cold as ice. The person who brought Ezaki and Shiori together was Shiraishi Bei. A girl called Xiaoduo from Shiori's school had been with a boy named Xu Wu from Ezaki's school for a long time, but Xu Wu had recently claimed he liked someone else. That someone else was Shiraishi Bei. Xiaoduo had a whole squad of loyal sisters behind her and announced that they were going to teach Shiraishi Bei a lesson. Shiori had no idea where Ezaki sprang from, only that by the time she had slowly pedaled her bicycle to the scene, the two sides were already on the brink of fighting. Ezaki was standing there in full hero mode, shielding Shiraishi Bei behind him. Shiori parked her bike, ran a hand through her little curls, went over to comfort a tear-streaked Xiaoduo, and then turned to ask Shiraishi Bei, "Do you like that guy?" Shiraishi Bei was beautiful, doll-like, exquisitely made. Beside her, Xu Wu looked downright vulgar. Shiori couldn't believe a pretty girl like that would have such terrible taste. Sure enough, Shiraishi Bei shook her head hard. Shiori nodded, went back to Xiaoduo, and said, "If you're going to teach somebody a lesson, at least pick the right person. Shiraishi Bei doesn't even like Xu Wu. Xu Wu's just making a fool of himself. Do you still like him?" Xiaoduo thought for a moment, then shook her head too, though fresh tears fell immediately. Xu Wu was still shouting at Shiraishi Bei, insisting, "Stop lying to yourself. Shiraishi Bei, you do like me!" Shiori saw Shiraishi Bei roll a very beautiful pair of eyes behind Ezaki's back. She laughed, walked up to Xu Wu, and without any warning punched him hard in the nose. "That one was for Xiaoduo." Then another punch. "That one was for Shiraishi Bei." Then a third. "And that one was for me. For wasting my homework time."
After she started being called Sister Zero, Natsukawa Shiori felt more and more like some neighborhood committee auntie. Watching two girls in front of her yank each other's hair while screaming loudly enough to rival police sirens, she thought her head was going to explode. Before this she had never realized girls could have so many reasons to fight. They could fight over boys, over grades, over one sentence that rubbed them the wrong way, even over a pretty hair clip. She was honestly impressed by this bunch of "good sisters." "Have you fought enough yet? Do you know how embarrassing this is?" Shiori said while eating an ice cream cone. By the time she finished the cone, the two girls still weren't done, and she finally lost her temper. She yanked one of them aside and shot a warning look at the other, who was about to pounce. "If you've got the guts, fight me instead." How could they dare? Shiori's story of taking down the previous generation's girl boss had already become legend. "Girls ought to stick together, you know? If you have time to fight, go home and do two more math problems." Shiori cursed at them. "But, Sister Zero," said Youyou, the short-haired girl who shouted "Sister Zero" with the most enthusiasm, in gloriously awful Mandarin, "we're bad girls. If we study too hard, wouldn't that be super embarrassing?" "Who taught you a twisted worldview like that? Failing exams is what's embarrassing, okay? Go home. Everybody disperse." Shiori waved her hand like she was chasing flies, climbed back onto her battered bicycle, and swayed off toward home, followed by a whole little scooter brigade led by Youyou. "Sis, get a new bike. This weekend let's go for a ride together. It'll look awesome." Shiori refused without mercy. "No money." While waiting at a red light, she saw Ezaki standing there too. Beside him, rabbit-like Shiraishi Bei waved at her enthusiastically. Ezaki saw Shiori as well. For some reason, he kept staring without looking away, his gaze steady and direct, full of scrutiny and curiosity. Shiori grew uncomfortable under it and whistled at him in a deliberately flirtatious, street-thug sort of way. Behind her, all the bad girls obligingly burst into a chorus of whistles too.
When the red light turned green and Shiori started to push her bike through the crowd, Ezaki's voice somehow came through all the surrounding noise with startling clarity. "Turn back while you still can." Shiori nearly laughed herself off her bicycle. What kind of line was that?
At the citywide high-school essay competition, Natsukawa Shiori's examination room was Number Nine. She was three minutes late. When she pushed open the door, a lot of people looked up, but among them one gaze felt both familiar and strange. Following it, she found Ezaki, surprise written plainly in his eyes. He surely hadn't expected to see Natsukawa Shiori there. In his mind she was probably nothing more than a trashy little girl-boss from a third-rate school. Shiori raised the corners of her mouth slightly, ran to her seat, and began thinking over the topics on the board. But her eyes kept sneaking toward Ezaki. He hadn't started writing either. His right hand spun his pen while his left held up his cheek, and his profile faced the window. It was a bright day, sunlight streaming in. The camphor trees outside were lush and thick, and the white blossoms scattered through the little garden looked like snow. Shiori thought of something and began to write. What she never knew was that the reflection in the window let Ezaki see every one of her secret glances. Ezaki handed in his essay before she did, so when Shiori saw him crouched at the school gate afterward teasing a stray puppy, she was a little surprised. When he saw her, he smiled naturally. Squatting there in the sunlight, with his eyes curving into gentle crescents, he looked so tender it was like a breeze in spring blowing across her heart. The competition school was one of the city's elite schools in the northern district. Both Ezaki's school and Shiori's were in the southern district, and their homes were in the south too, so they had the same way back. Shiori bought an ice cream cone and ate it while walking, smearing it all over her mouth without noticing. Looking at her, Ezaki smiled and said, "I never knew someone as childish as you could be a girl boss." Shiori narrowed her eyes in the light, scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, "Being a girl boss doesn't take any technical skill. You just have to be able to fight." After a pause, she added, "Actually, I never knew I was this good at it either." Ezaki frowned and said nothing. The air between them turned awkward again. While they stood side by side at a bus stop, waiting, Shiori saw an elderly couple walking toward them hand in hand. When they passed a little lilac tree, the old woman said something, and the old man walked over, picked a few of the prettiest blossoms, and tucked them into her hair. When the wind blew, the old woman smiled with pursed lips like some little girl who still knew nothing of the world. Shiori blinked, suddenly feeling moisture rise in her eyes. "Could you stop fighting from now on?" Ezaki asked.
Shiori smoked one of the cigarettes Youyou offered up to her, scratched at her curls, and sat in the little garden behind the library lost in thought. Perhaps this feeling was what people called a crush. She had never once imagined that a blockhead like her would someday be caught up in such tender nonsense. That afternoon, with sunlight thick and lazy all around her, she sat alone on the edge of the flowerbed and used her battered little monochrome phone, whose screen was so worn she could barely read it, to type out a text for Ezaki one character at a time. If you liked someone, she thought, then you had to do something about it. Otherwise wasn't it just wasted affection? To go through the whole thing and have the person you like know nothing about it, feel neither joy nor trouble because of your feelings, to love like that without any effect at all, what a waste of energy. That wasn't her style. The message Natsukawa Shiori sent Ezaki said: At lunch I had garlic-fried chicken gizzards and spicy cabbage. It was really good. A long time later, Ezaki replied with only: haha. Shiori circled the flowerbed over and over with her phone in hand, then furiously threw down the cigarette butt, stamped on it several times, and only then picked it up and put it in the trash. Did Ezaki not like her? Or had he simply failed to receive the signal of her love?
At that citywide essay competition, Natsukawa Shiori won a purely consolatory third prize, while Ezaki took first. She shoved the certificate into her desk and never wanted to look at it again. The prize was a fancy fountain pen, which she promptly handed over to the only classmate in her school who liked writing exam essays with one, a bespectacled bookworm. Then she noticed an unread text on her phone. It was from Ezaki: Are you free tonight? Let's have dinner. She sent back a calm little Okay while secretly celebrating. Youyou tried to crane her neck over and see the phone, but Shiori nearly twisted her arm off with one backhanded move. "Ow, ow!" Youyou yelped. After recovering the use of her right hand, she leaned in again, fearless as ever. "Sister Zero, are you in love?"
The dinner Natsukawa Shiori had been looking forward to was definitely not this. The steak was delicious, the fries crisp, the juice sweet, but she really wasn't used to all the knives and forks, and she certainly hadn't expected Shiraishi Bei to come along too. To be fair, Shiori actually liked Shiraishi Bei. She was pretty, innocent, and well-mannered, the kind of girl boys and girls alike would both love. But sitting beside her made Shiori feel depressed. Just like now. Shiraishi Bei used the knife in her right hand and the fork in her left with perfect elegance, while Shiori kept knocking her knife against the white porcelain plate with a horrible scraping sound. They were like a pair of opposites. While Shiraishi Bei and Ezaki chatted happily about school gossip, Shiori raised her hand and shouted, "Waiter, bring me a pair of chopsticks!" The chopsticks came quickly, and only then did she relax a little. Looking at her, Ezaki smiled. "There's a get-together at my house this weekend. It's my birthday. Natsukawa Shiori, you have to come." Shiraishi Bei chimed in excitedly, "It'll be so lively. You don't know, Xiaogou, Ezaki's house is huge. Two stories, a villa, and a beautiful private garden. Last time he had our classmates over, it was amazing. This time it's an indoor buffet, so the food will definitely be delicious too. Oh, right, you have to wear a little dress. There'll be lots of pretty girls and handsome boys as well." Shiraishi Bei was already lost in her own delightful anticipation. She really was an incredibly innocent, lovable girl. The uncut steak was huge, and Shiori shoved mouthful after mouthful in with her chopsticks until she could barely speak. In the end, Shiraishi Bei paid the bill. She had really only wanted to thank Shiori, which was why she invited Ezaki to dinner as well. Afterward, Shiraishi Bei's driver came to pick her up and offered Shiori a ride home, but Shiori refused on the grounds that they were going in opposite directions. Ezaki smiled. "Perfect, then. This gives me a chance to walk you back." In the dark, Shiori's face looked a little bleak. She took sixty-eight yuan out of her pocket and held it out to Ezaki without a word, then turned to get her bicycle. She had seen the bill. A little over two hundred in total. Sixty-eight per person. For her, that one meal was almost an entire week's food money. Ezaki followed her and said, "Why are you giving me money? Didn't we say Shiraishi Bei was treating us?" Shiori kept her head down. "I don't want you to treat me." Those two pronouns, I and you, stretched the distance between them very far indeed, drawing a line on the ground and splitting them into different countries. The smile slowly faded from Ezaki's face. The hand holding the sixty-eight yuan fell back to his side. Looking at her, he asked, "What exactly do you mean by that?" Shiori kept her head down and stubbornly said, "I don't want you treating me. And I don't want to come this weekend." "Why? Come on." "No." "Are you shy? There won't be many people. Just a few of my close friends. They're all easy to get along with, like Shiraishi Bei." No matter what Ezaki said, Shiori answered with the same two cold words. All the while she kept her head down, digging at a tiny hole in the bike seat with fierce concentration. A proud boy like Ezaki had probably never met with many setbacks in his life, much less been refused like this by a girl. His expression grew uglier and uglier, until finally he turned and left without another word.
On Ezaki's birthday, Natsukawa Shiori did not appear. But she did send him a text of just four simple characters: Happy birthday. While Ezaki and Shiraishi Bei were wearing pretty clothes, drinking pretty juice, and eating pretty food, Shiori stood under the sun and sold one hundred skewers of grilled sausage. Then she ate the hundred-and-first skewer herself. Ezaki left his phone in his bedroom and only saw the message after the party was over and his friends had gone. He replied with the same three characters as always: Why? Why didn't you come? Why did you refuse? The phone quickly vibrated. Shiori wrote back: Because I only own ripped jeans. I don't have an evening dress. The knot that had sat between Ezaki's brows all evening finally loosened. He texted her and asked to meet the next day. They met in the city park. Shiori arrived first and walked thirteen circles around the gingko trees before Ezaki finally turned up. When he came running toward her through the sunlight, he looked like every sweet dream of adolescence at once, fresh as a lily just beginning to bloom. They went boating, rode the ferris wheel, the carousel, and the little train, playing like children. By the time Ezaki walked her home, dusk had come, the sunset hanging on the horizon in a deep rose color. Shiori didn't let him walk all the way to her door. She stopped at the mouth of the alley beneath a wall covered in ivy. When the wind blew, the ivy shifted like green waves.
Although she had only agreed carelessly, once Natsukawa Shiori promised Ezaki she wouldn't fight anymore, she really did stop. She felt more and more like a neighborhood auntie. In fact, maybe now you could simply call her Auntie Xia. Most of the time she was busy acting as a mediator in other girls' disputes, over stolen boyfriends, mutual dislike, or stepping on someone's foot. If anything happened among the girls at school, their first thought was always to find Natsukawa Shiori. More useful than the teachers. So Youyou trotted around after her all the time saying, "Sister Zero, you're my idol." But when girls from their school were bullied by girls from another school, when she saw Youyou being beaten, even Shiori's improved temper couldn't hold. Brotherhood wasn't something only boys had. Girls had that same hard, brave feeling for one another. The other side was fierce. Shiori subdued them, but not without getting hurt herself. There were bloodied scratches all over her neck, bruises on her face, and places where the skin had split. Worst of all, on the way home, at the mouth of that same alley, she ran into Ezaki. He seemed to have come there specially to wait for her, but the joy and expectation on his face vanished the instant he saw her injuries. "Didn't you promise me you wouldn't fight anymore? You lied to me. Do you know how worried people who care about you get every time you fight? Why can't you be like an ordinary girl for once?" Ezaki said, pained and furious. Shiori didn't know how to explain, so she just stood there in silence like an idiot. The more he spoke, the angrier he grew. In the end, he threw the box in his hands to the ground and strode away. Shiori opened it and found a broken pair of little clay figures inside, shaped like an old woman and an old man. She remembered seeing them the last time she had gone shopping with Ezaki. At once she thought of the elderly couple with the lilacs in the old woman's hair. She remembered telling him then that one day she would like to grow old that way with the person she loved. In the box there was also a tiny card, and Ezaki's clean, beautiful handwriting filled it: Xiaogou, many years from now, when you've become a white-haired old woman, I hope the little old man beside you will be me.
Natsukawa Shiori sent Ezaki countless messages, and he replied to none of them. When she went to find him at that first-rate high school, wearing the uniform of her third-rate one, she caused quite a stir, but she didn't see him. He had gone to Okinawa as an exchange student for two weeks. Instead she saw Shiraishi Bei. Rabbit-like as ever, Shiraishi Bei darted across the field to her, smiling sweetly and cutely. "Xiaogou, are you here for Ezaki? I just knew no girl could escape the pull of Ezaki's charms." Shiori stared. "What do you mean?" Shiraishi Bei kept smiling. "Ezaki hasn't told you? He made a bet that he could attract girls from a third-rate high school too." It felt to Shiori as though someone had punched her in the head. She smiled weakly and said, "Is that so?"
After Ezaki came back to school, he went to see Natsukawa Shiori and said his phone had been lost, so he might not have replied to some of her messages. Shiori smiled and said it didn't matter. Ezaki asked, "What does 'it doesn't matter' mean?" Shiori only narrowed her eyes and smiled without answering. Then Youyou ran over to call her to a group fight. Some of their sisters had gotten into an argument with girls from another school, and it had escalated into a real fight. They needed backup. Ezaki seized Shiori by the wrist, looked her in the eye, and said, "Don't go. If you go, I'll never come to find you again." Shiori looked at his beautiful brows, at the seriousness in his face, smiled once, and then slowly pulled her hand from his. After that she followed Youyou away. Behind her, Ezaki shouted himself hoarse. "Natsukawa Shiori, is your heart made of stone? Do you know how worried I get every single time you fight? You little hoodlum, you're hopeless." Youyou whispered, "Sister Zero, actually it's fine if you don't come. We've got this." Sitting behind Youyou on her little scooter, arms around her waist, Shiori asked, "Youyou, do you know where the world's smallest rainbow is?" Youyou shook her head stupidly. Shiori pointed to her own eyes and said, "In tears." And then the tears suddenly fell.
When the university entrance exams came, Natsukawa Shiori got exactly what she wanted and won a place at the best university in the country. The bright red admission letter made her mother grin until her face seemed ready to split. When she heard that both Shiraishi Bei and Ezaki had been admitted to Stanford in America and would soon be crossing the ocean together, Shiori was helping her mother fry sausages. Business was especially good that day. Don't look so surprised. Who says the leader of a girl gang can't have a mother who runs a grilled-sausage cart on the street? Shiori's father died early, and she had grown up alone with her mother. Her mother sold grilled sausages outside Shiori's middle school, and by selling them every day managed to feed her, clothe her, and put her through school. Because Shiori used to help her mother after class in middle school and always smelled of cooking oil and smoke, the girls in her class who loved cleanliness and prettiness never wanted to be friends with her. That was how she became the lone ranger she had always seemed to be. After Shiori failed the entrance exam, her mother blamed it on the time she spent helping at the sausage stall. So once she entered high school, except during holidays, her mother never let her help anymore. Natsukawa Shiori may have accidentally become a girl-gang leader, accidentally become Sister Zero, but she had never once stopped studying hard. Because that was the one thing her mother most wanted her to do well. Because that was the one thing that let her mother believe in the future. Shiori was not beautiful. She was poor. But she was strong, cheerful, clever, and kind. Later, she learned that Shiraishi Bei had lied. Ezaki had never made any sort of bet about approaching her. The vague liking, perhaps even love, that had grown between them had truly been the sincere feeling of a seventeen-year-old boy and girl. Once she knew that, her heart felt both joy and sorrow. Joy, because what had once sprouted between them had been as pure as crystal, untouched by dirt. Sorrow, because in the end they had still missed each other. And yet perhaps, she thought, that really was the best ending after all. Ripped jeans cannot dance with an evening gown. A battered guitar cannot harmonize with a piano. How could Natsukawa Shiori, whose mother sold grilled sausages, ever have walked hand in hand with Ezaki, who lived in a two-story villa?