If Walls Could Talk

I was born in a small seaside town. The one thing I did every day without fail was go to Number 87 Fish-Lamp Street. It stood by the sea, facing the road, and housed a tiny wooden-comb shop. Every day I sprawled beside Sister Momoki's big brazier and could sleep for a very long time. Then one day a milk-tea shop appeared next door, a strange place with no shopkeeper. If you dropped in two coins, you got a steaming cup of milk tea and the right to write a secret on one great black wall. Your own secret, or someone else's. There are too many secrets in this world. Only by speaking them out can the weight grow lighter. Before long, that wall was covered with every kind of sentence. Across from it stood a poplar tree, and because of that I always felt that someone was there on the other side, spying on all our secrets.

If he had not caught my hand before I fell, if his gaze had not been so gentle, I don't think I would ever have fallen in love with Mizuo Weio. When the rainy season came, I finally dropped my two coins into the slot machine and, cradling my milk tea beneath an umbrella, wrote on the wall in secret: I envy classmates whose families are whole, who can eat with both their parents, go out with both their parents. I've always envied them, envied them to death. You are all so happy. But my parents divorced. I love you, and I hate you.

The black wall for writing secrets.

That day the rain was pouring, and unfortunately I'd left my big umbrella at home. Mizuo Weio called me under his and said he'd walk me back. My cheeks grew hot. Under that small umbrella I deliberately kept as much distance from him as I could, but I was still getting drenched. "You're soaked through," he said anxiously, reaching to catch my wrist. His fingers closed over the bracelet I always wore on my left arm, a thin silver bangle whose metal I never knew, only that I'd worn it for years and its shine had never faded. The instant he touched it, it bit into my skin. Something seemed to pierce my whole body. I flung off Mizuo Weio's hand and ran straight into the white rain. I went to the milk-tea shop on Fish-Lamp Street, to the black wall. After that came the blankness, and then I opened my eyes to find Hayama Anmi holding a folding iron chair, fire burning in her gaze, while across from her stood Mizuo Weio, roaring himself hoarse. "If you don't stay far away from Aoi, you'll kill her!" "You're the one killing her," Hayama Anmi screamed back, and looked ready to launch herself at him. I used the last of my strength to reach out my left hand and catch her. "Anmi... don't." Sunlight slanted through the window and flashed off the bracelets on our arms: one gold, one silver, two identical bangles on two different wrists. Mizuo Weio stared at them for a very long time, then left the room without saying a word. "I'm sorry," Hayama Anmi said, gripping my hand as tears dripped across my skin. "He was right. How could I bear to hurt you like this?" Then, like so many times before, she put her warm hand on my hair and stroked it.

Hayama Anmi had countless boyfriends and still kept stealing other people's men. In her eyes, men were only toys and tools. She had always believed that the two of us were bound together for life. My parents had long since gone off to other cities and only sent money at regular intervals; that was all I told Mizuo Weio when he asked about them. He wanted to ask more, about my mother and the man, but realized in time he had reached for something he shouldn't. So I smiled and said for him, "No, my mother and that man aren't together. Because that man is already dead."

Forget even the things that hurt most.

Hayama Anmi appeared again half a year later. The weather was freezing, yet she still wore a short skirt, still smoked with her left hand, the gold bangle on her wrist flashing painfully bright. After the fifth cigarette, she used the voice of command I knew too well and said, "Negishi Aoi, break up with Mizuo Weio right now." I fought down a cough and answered with firm calm, "No." Hayama Anmi seized my collar and dragged her face close to mine. Through clenched teeth she asked, "Why?" I shoved her away with all my strength and shouted, "Because I like him. I love him. I want to stay with him forever." The slap landed clear and loud. The person most important to me in all my life, and the person I hated most, was Hayama Anmi. "When I was sixteen, I was violated," she said later. "He ruined everything. So afterward, I stabbed him again and again. I thought that would make up for what had been taken from me, but I didn't know the more I tried to make up for it, the more I would lose instead." I knew that handwriting at once. It was Hayama Anmi's. Tears started again as though two water pipes had burst inside me. Perhaps the truly unbearable things are the ones you are forced to forget. Or else the things you still remember simply have not yet hurt enough.

In truth, I had always hated Hayama Anmi. As I've said, she was the most important person in my life and also the one I hated most. Once I even leaned to her ear and whispered, "Sometimes I think how wonderful it would be if you died." Back then I was full of pain and hatred, and she only smiled faintly. But now, when that day seemed really to be approaching, I understood that I couldn't lose her any more than I could lose myself. For years we lost contact and vanished from one another's daily lives, each with our own separate world, and yet it always felt as though we still knew the other existed. That knowledge kept us from being lonely, from hurting too much. Then Mizuo Weio appeared and became my new protector, and I was the first to betray the bond between Anmi and me. Much as it pained me to admit it, Hayama Anmi was right. He and we were not of the same kind. He wasn't suited to me. But how was I supposed to let go of the warmest thing I had ever touched?

When Hayama Anmi woke again, stubborn to the end, she brought up Mizuo Weio once more. In a weak but unwavering voice she said, "Negishi Aoi, you can't be with Mizuo Weio. Because he is O Linsheng's son." My brain began to ring. All the blood in my body seemed to reverse direction. Hayama Anmi went on speaking. During the time she had been away, she had been investigating Mizuo Weio. He had changed his name, erased his past, and returned to this town. He had to be here to uncover the truth of his father's disappearance. After I left the hospital, I missed Mizuo Weio terribly, that boy gentle as a cup of hot water. He had held my hand tightly. He had kissed my forehead once, softly. I couldn't give up that thought. So I took the carving knife my father had given me and cut open my wrist. Blood dripped, thick and red, into the glaring white sink. The contrast made me dizzy. That carving knife had stayed with me for years. However dirty or old it got, I had never once thought of throwing it away. Death really is a beautiful thing, I thought. Look how brightly the blood runs down my silver bracelet. The silver bangle on my wrist had once been part of a pair, one gold and one silver. Only together were they whole. Their owner had split them apart and put the silver one on me. She had told me that we were both people destined for hell after death. That this was the bond that would tie us for life.

In the end I didn't die. Mizuo Weio climbed through my window once more and dragged me back. The moment I woke, I tore out the IV needle and tried to get out of bed. He shouted at me, but I was beyond hearing anything. I grabbed him and cried, "Kill me. Let me die by your hands." He slapped me so hard it left my face stinging and said, "Hayama Anmi killed herself in the hospital. She swallowed razor blades. She already died. You will live properly for me." I sat there as though all the bones in my body had been removed, staring at the white hospital bed where she had lain, so still everyone almost believed she was only asleep. Then I broke down at last. Mizuo Weio held my shoulders gently and said, "Do you know that once a person has killed someone, they can never smile with a true smile again? Negishi Aoi, please tell me. How did my father really die?"

Mizuo Weio's father, O Linsheng, was a thoroughly rotten man. He had seduced my mother. He had ruined my Hayama Anmi. He was the source of every evil thing. I was eleven years old then, still a child who knew nothing. My parents' marriage had already begun to crack, but I still went on hoping stupidly that they might somehow repair it. That night it was after midnight. I was walking home by myself because my father wanted to focus on his carving and had driven me out of the studio. I called my mother. "I'm scared," I said. Before I could say anything more, the call ended with a sharp click. I walked on in trembling fear. When I was almost home, I ran into O Linsheng. He was drunk, his eyes glowing green. He shoved me to the ground so hard that my whole body slammed against the unforgiving earth. I was frightened almost to death. Then shame and hatred surged up together, and in blind panic I reached for the carving knife my father had given me. O Linsheng collapsed. Only then did I realize there was another girl standing in front of me, a sharp knife clenched in her hand as well. She seemed barely aware of me. She had been violated a few days before. She was another victim. That was the first time I ever saw Hayama Anmi. Once I came back to myself, all I could do was sob. Her white shirt was covered in bright red blood, but she herself was terrifyingly calm. She stuffed O Linsheng's body into a huge black plastic bag and dragged it out into the road, then shoved it beneath the wheels of a speeding truck. At last she took the silver bracelet off her own wrist, looped it around mine, and said, "This is our bond for life."

After that I cried until my voice gave out, fainting several times. Mizuo Weio seemed to lose his own soul while he listened, only muttering over and over that he had never imagined such a truth. This boy who had once sworn to love me forever still let go of me in the end. He rushed out of the hospital and died beneath the wheels of a speeding truck. Hayama Anmi died too. One by razor blade. One by the road. It turned out Mizuo Weio's mother had been a kind and gentle woman named Su. She had loved O Linsheng beyond everything. After O Linsheng vanished completely, she sank into grief and died as well. Su-Wei-Ou, that had been the original meaning of his name: Su, for Ou. Mizuo Weio sold several of his inventions and returned to our little town determined to uncover the truth of his father's disappearance. He even came up with an ingenious plan. He built a milk-tea vending machine, opened the milk-tea shop, and painted that black wall for secrets. He believed someone out there knew how his father had vanished, and someone would eventually want to confess it. Hidden in the poplar tree opposite the wall was a tiny surveillance camera. Mizuo Weio told me later that he had never meant to pry into the ugliness of human nature, but in the end he did it for selfish reasons. After all, it was through that black wall that he had successfully drawn close to Negishi Aoi, the daughter of his father's former lover. He saw my confusion and my struggle. He saw the secret I wrote on the wall. And when he drew that little red smiley face beneath it, he already knew he had fallen for me. From then on he grew afraid of learning the truth, and in his heart he had already decided that Hayama Anmi must have killed his father. That was why he tried to make me cut Anmi out of my life forever. Everything had already come to an end. I believed myself to be the murderer. I had killed O Linsheng. Then, in a crueler twist, I killed Hayama Anmi and Mizuo Weio too.

But Sister Momoki shook her head. "Aoi," she said, "I was the only witness to that whole case. O Linsheng wasn't killed by you. Your knife only went into his stomach at an angle. An eleven-year-old girl didn't have the strength to kill a grown man. Hayama Anmi was the real murderer. She drove a long, sharp knife straight into O Linsheng's heart." Sister Momoki had once been my father's student. The moment she saw the butterfly hairpin my father had carved for me, she knew. Only one of his students could have produced such delicate, ornate work. She said she had long admired my father and had even boldly confessed to him once, but he rejected her because he already had the wife and daughter he loved most. That day Sister Momoki had been on her way to our house and accidentally witnessed the whole murder. She never told anyone the secret. Instead she quietly began looking after me, a little girl mangled by pain. Then, on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month, when I finally turned eighteen, I received the gift Hayama Anmi had mailed before her death. It was another new carving knife. Beneath it lay a letter.

My dearest Negishi Aoi, happy eighteenth birthday. Please believe me. You have never killed anyone. The one who truly killed O Linsheng was me. One day, sooner or later, I would use one life to repay another. As for you, all you need to do is live well and live happily. I also need to say I'm sorry. When you were at your best, at eleven, I dragged you into darkness. I was so lonely then, so empty. I only wanted someone to stay with me. So I used that bangle like a handcuff and locked the rest of your life to mine. This birthday gift is still a carving knife. I hope you won't use it to hurt anyone anymore. I hope you'll use it to carve a life instead. You see, our lives are all like that. One cut, and whatever we carve is what remains. Once the hand is raised, there is no regret. Finally, please forgive my selfishness, and forgive me for leaving. The one who loves you most, Hayama Anmi.

Another rainy season came. From then on, I could only listen to the wind and watch the sea by myself, breathing in the salt and damp and missing Mizuo Weio and Hayama Anmi. The secret wall no longer dispensed milk tea. But I still went to it and wrote my final secret there.

My birthday falls on the fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month, the Ghost Festival. When I was little, my mother once took me to have my fortune told. The fortune-teller pinched his fingers together and thought for a long time before saying, This child carries misfortune in her fate. She may well end her life alone.