You Are Neither a Shooting Star nor Falling Snow

I was born in winter. The first snow of that year fell on the day I came into the world, crystal dust drifting through the whole sky like smoke. My father named me Yuki Shiraishi. He said he had never seen such a beautiful child before, pink-skinned and tiny as a baby mouse. When I laughed and called him a liar because mice were ugly, he smiled and told me that even the ugliest mouse looked lovely to its parents. I pouted and asked why my mother didn't seem to think so. Father stroked my head and said that some people wear their love on their lips, while others hide it in their hearts. I was five then and believed everything. I ran to my mother and asked why she hid her love and never said it aloud. She ignored me. I clung to her legs. She shoved me away so hard I fell backward and struck my head on the dressing table. Something cold slid from my forehead into my eye. Mother looked at me as if she wanted to say something. But she swallowed it. Instead she picked up the travel bag beside the bed and walked out. She was wearing the dress Father had just bought for her, a dress with a wide round skirt that opened in the wind like a lovely parasol. But there was no rain outside and no snow either, so where was she taking that umbrella? I followed her out and saw a thin, tall man waiting around the corner. When he saw her, he dropped his cigarette and came forward. He had a neat little mustache that lifted at the ends when he smiled, just like the cartoon Avanti. I thought my mother must love clever old Avanti from television as much as I did, because the moment she reached him, she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. Only he had not come on a donkey. He had driven there in a beautiful car, the prettiest I had ever seen. I ran toward it shouting for Mother, wanting her to take me with her in that shining little sedan. But she turned her face aside and said to Avanti, "Hurry. Hurry up." Dust from the tires flew into my throat. I crouched by the roadside coughing and coughing until tears came up with it. After Mother left, Father fell ill, then changed into someone I no longer knew. He stared at me without moving, began to drink, and when he was drunk he would point at me and curse, or beat me with his belt, snarling that I was a whore's child. I didn't know what the words meant, and I was too frightened to ask. I learned to fear him the way mice fear cats. When he sobered up, he would crouch with his head in his hands and repeat, over and over, "Yuki, I'm sorry." But I knew he wasn't the one who had wronged us. The one who had done that was the woman who had never spoken her love aloud. I began to hate Mother. Why had she abandoned us? Could Avanti really matter more than Father and me? I tried to find them once, walking and walking in the same direction that beautiful car had gone until I had no strength left. When I looked up, slanting evening light had reddened the sky. The sun was sinking slowly through torn clouds. I reached up as if I could catch the last of its glow, as though I might somehow keep hold of the last warm memory of my childhood. But the light withdrew and vanished in the darkening horizon like a shooting star. I collapsed and howled, and that year I was nine.

Later Father decided to go away for work. He left me in my grandmother's care. Before he went, he took a handful of candy out of his pocket and held it out to me, but I had become so frightened of him that I only shrank back. He sighed and looked at me with such sadness and helplessness that even then I understood he was giving something up. After that I lived with Grandmother. She was an old woman who had never enjoyed a good life and still had to shoulder the burden of raising me in her old age. Yet she was good to me. At night she made me sleep curled up against her, and if I couldn't sleep she would sing old lines from the opera. When I asked anxiously whether they were true, she laughed and told me those were only plays and that plays were lies, but life was real. Grandmother had never been to school. She always said that people couldn't live without learning or they'd only be trampled on, and for that reason she insisted I keep studying. When the neighbor said she would take me as her own daughter and pay my school fees, Grandmother hugged me tightly and refused. The woman next door, all big flowers and loud colors, sneered that no one would want such a runt if she herself could bear children. Grandmother snatched up the broom from behind the door and beat the woman over the head with it again and again, crying that runt or not, I was still a child of the Shiraishi family. She swore she would melt pots and sell scrap if she had to, but she would send me to school. After that she climbed the mountain every morning to dig wild greens and carried them to town to sell. I knew she was tired, but she always said idleness was idleness whatever you did with it. That autumn, the money she earned from selling wild greens paid my tuition in handful after handful of small coins. The teacher collecting them glanced up and asked why the money was all green and dirty, whether it had been sitting in chicken droppings. Everyone around us laughed. I wanted to cry, but instead I glared back and asked whether her eyelids looked so green because they had fallen into chicken droppings too. Unfortunately, that teacher later became my homeroom teacher. She thought I had humiliated her in public and made trouble for me constantly after that. If I finished my work first, she said I was showing off. If I ranked first in the class, she said I had cheated. One day she flung my paper down and sneered that if she ever caught me cheating, I need not bother staying in class. I finally snapped and told her to hand me another test if she didn't believe me. She turned ugly at once. How dare I speak to her in that tone? Then she said she could see what sort of parents had raised me. That look in her eyes felt like a red-hot iron pressed into my skin and straight through into my heart. I shouted that she wasn't allowed to speak of my mother that way. She stared at me for several seconds and then burst into tears over the lectern. I couldn't understand it. She had said countless cruel things to me without crying, so why was one sentence from me enough to set her off? The school called in a guardian. Grandmother sat in the principal's office like a child who had done wrong, head bowed, apologizing again and again. The principal, with his thick glasses, grizzled hair, and scalp pressed flat beneath it all like old felt, asked the teacher what she thought. She said she couldn't teach me. When we got home, Grandmother asked whether I knew I had been wrong. I twisted my face away and kept silent. I didn't think I had been wrong at all. She grew angry, opened the door, and ordered me into the yard until I had thought things through. There was a tall camellia tree outside, heavy with large orange-red blossoms. I stared up at them, thinking how brilliant and splendid they were, and thinking that if someone would only pick one for me, perhaps all the troubles in the world might be forgotten. Just then the whole tree shuddered. Leaves rattled like hands. A boy's face appeared between the branches. He waved and asked why I was crying, who had bullied me. I bit my lip and said nothing. He plucked a camellia and tossed it down into the yard where it landed at my feet. Smiling, he said, "Don't cry. This one is for you."

His name was Kaito, and he said it as if he were proud of the whole universe. He thumped his chest and told me he was older, stronger, and from Hokkaido, and that if anyone bullied me again he would deal with them. He had come there with his teachers to sketch landscapes. When I asked whether sketching meant drawing whatever you saw so that it looked like a photograph, he thought for a second and said yes, exactly that. Kaito was an art-school student, though his true talent seemed to be climbing trees. He said that when he was little, he used to get sleepy whenever he painted. When his father pinched him to wake him up, he'd bolt straight up a tree, so in the end his painting stayed mediocre but his tree-climbing became extraordinary. His mother liked to joke that where other families got filial sons from beatings, his had gotten timber instead of talent. He laughed after telling me that, and there was something so bright in his laughter. He said that brightness was called happiness. I copied him, baring my own teeth and laughing too, thinking perhaps I could borrow a little happiness that way. A few days later I returned to school, this time in another class. My new teacher was far better-looking, without the red-and-green eye shadow of the first one. She wouldn't let us call her "teacher." We had to call her "miss," and soon our classroom was full of misses and misters, as if everyone in it ought to have been lovable. In truth we were the worst class in the grade. Nobody liked us. Nobody cared about us. In the principal's words, if only we could avoid causing trouble, that would already be enough. Many of the students began to despise school. They felt they were already ruined and would never amount to anything anyway. I felt the same. Although Miss kept telling us to let other people talk while we walked our own road, the world was huge and we were tiny, and without anyone to point the way, how could we know which road was really ours? I told Grandmother I didn't want to go to school anymore. I wanted to leave like Father, work somewhere far away, and send money home so she could rest. She was terribly disappointed. She sighed and went back inside. I wandered alone along the village road between fields of rapeseed in full bloom, gold on gold as far as I could see. I wondered what lay at the end of that sea of yellow. Mountains? Water? Ravines? Another village? Ahead, a group of people came toward me with drawing boards on their backs and pails in their hands. I stepped to one side and watched them pass. Then someone leapt out from the group and called my name. It was Kaito. He asked why I wasn't at school. When I muttered that I had quit, he asked why, and whether someone had bullied me again. I only shook my head. Just then someone shouted for me from behind. It was the woman next door in her flowered dress, still as bright and vulgar as ever. She waved frantically and shouted that my grandmother wasn't going to make it. For a second I froze. Then I ran. Kaito caught my hand and ran with me through those endless yellow fields that suddenly seemed to have no end at all.

Grandmother died of a heart attack. The doctor said she was old and bound to go that way sooner or later, but I knew that wasn't true. She hadn't died because she was old. She had died because of me. I knelt by the bed weeping and touched her face and hands as if she might open her eyes again at any moment and pull me into her arms to sing that old opera line and tell me once more that plays were false but life was real. Never in my life had I wanted time to turn backward as badly as I did then. If it had, I would never, never have told her I wanted to quit school. But there is no medicine for regret. Some mistakes cannot be undone once you have taken the step. Father came back for the funeral, looking decades older than when he had left. I stared at him for a long time before I finally managed to call him Dad. When the funeral was over, he packed his things again. I asked when he was leaving. He said tomorrow. I asked whether he was going alone. He nodded and stuffed folded clothes into his bag. I knew his mind was already made up, but I still couldn't stop myself from asking whether he didn't want me anymore. He took so long to answer that at last I understood there was no answer. I sat in the yard crying until tears pattered down in a steady stream. At last I really was a child no one wanted. That night there were no stars and no moon, only blank darkness and blank desolation. Kaito's head emerged from the camellia tree again and asked why I was crying now. I couldn't say a word. He jumped down and told me to cry if I needed to, because he would stay with me. Not long afterward, he too had to leave. Life felt like a station platform then, built for brief stops and long departures. Kaito gave me a parting gift, a painting of a small girl standing under the tall camellia tree, head tipped up toward the sky while the heavy orange-red blossoms glowed above her like summer itself laid bare. In the corner he wrote that if anyone bullied me in the future, I should climb up a tree because a tree was the safest place there was. I laughed. Trees were safe, maybe. But he still hadn't taught me how to climb them. I sold some of Grandmother's things and boarded a train to Hokkaido. Kaito had once told me his home was near the Ishikari River, but Hokkaido was huge, and how was I supposed to find one home inside it? I stood in the station square watching crowds surge and traffic stream by and wondered where, in such a splendid and bustling world, I could possibly stop. An elderly woman with gray hair approached and asked whether I needed a room. She looked kind, so like a living version of Grandmother that I nodded and followed her. After a while I realized something was wrong. She kept leading me into darker and darker streets. I stopped and asked how much farther it was. She mumbled that it was close, but quickened her pace. I spun around and ran, but four or five young men sprang out of the shadows, caught me, clamped a hand over my mouth, and dragged away my bag. Then the kindly old woman's hands went up to her head and off came the gray wig, revealing black hair beneath it. She laughed and called me a little fool. She was a swindler, preying on girls fresh out of the countryside. I returned to the station with nothing but my empty bag and cried there until dawn. I remembered Kaito's words about trees being safest. I had come to ask him to teach me how to climb them, and instead I had lost even the painting he gave me. Still clutching that empty bag, I searched street after street, thinking perhaps whoever stole it had tossed the painting aside somewhere. During that search I found a little restaurant with a handwritten sign out front saying they were hiring and board was included. I went in timidly and, to my surprise, they hired me. All I had to do was wash dishes, and they would pay me eight hundred yen a month. I was delighted and stayed at once. I thought if I saved money for long enough, I could start looking for Kaito again. I wrote a whole stack of lost-item notices, but I had barely put up the first one when a neighborhood warden with a red armband caught me and fined me for defacing public space. I pleaded, but he wrote out the ticket anyway. It was my first day on the job. How was I supposed to pay? I called the restaurant. The owner wasn't there, so the cook, Hayashi, answered instead. As soon as he heard what had happened, he came for me. On the walk back I complained that everyone said the city was paved with gold, yet I hadn't found any gold at all and had only lost money. He laughed and quoted the old song about the outside world being both wonderful and helpless. His laughter reminded me of Kaito's, a big open laugh that showed every tooth. From that day onward, Hayashi and I became friends. Whenever work was slow, he slipped into the dish room to help me and said that a girl's hands were her second face and ought to be protected. I laughed and told him I didn't even care about the first face, so why bother with the second? Months passed. Winter in Hokkaido arrived early and hard. My hands swelled red from soaking in water all day and then broke out in chilblains. Whenever they warmed up, they hurt and itched so badly I wanted to scream. Hayashi ran from hospital to hospital buying every kind of ointment he could find and piled them in front of me. When I asked if he expected me to eat all of them, he scratched his head and admitted he didn't know which one worked best, so he'd bought everything. Suddenly my nose stung. Other than Kaito's painting, it was the second gift I had ever really received. I asked him then whether he had fallen for me. His face went red. He stammered for so long that in the end I simply turned away and told him I was sorry, but there was already someone else in my heart. The winter sun shone bright through the window, and never had bright light felt so cold.

New Year came quickly. The boss said this year's New Year's Eve would be special because there would be a giant wish-making event in the square and fireworks after midnight. Everyone in the restaurant was excited, counting the days until the holiday. That night the snow fell thicker and thicker until the earth was buried under it. It squeaked beneath our feet as if a thousand little white mice were being tickled into laughter. Someone asked what my wish would be, and I answered that I wanted to get rich, which made all the girls laugh and call me vulgar. I asked what they wanted, and they laughed that they were vulgar too. Then the host began the countdown. The crowd roared in waves like the sea. At midnight the bells struck and the fireworks went up. The sky burst with red and gold and green until it looked less like a sky than a wound cut open by light. I had never seen anything so beautiful. Never. Someone shoved me toward the stage and shouted that there would be a prize drawing there. Before I could answer, the crowd had already carried me away. It was like becoming part of some gigantic snowball rolling downhill. Panic hit me. People were crying now, cursing, screaming. Then someone grabbed my hand. I turned. It was Hayashi, yelling for me to come with him. But a huge fat man crashed between us, blocking us apart. My body and my arm were pulled in opposite directions so violently I screamed. Hayashi turned, drew back his fist, and slammed it into the man's face. The man fell away clutching his nose, and Hayashi dragged me past him. He shouted that the crowd was about to lose control. He stayed in front of me, using his body to push back the crush of people surging toward us. Several times he nearly fell. I braced myself against his back with all my strength. Around us the cries only got louder. Some people were already being trampled. Hayashi's eyes had gone blood-red from strain. He pointed at a tree ahead and shouted that I had to climb it because that was the only safe place. I nearly cried with terror. I told him I didn't know how. He wrapped an arm around me, pressed me against his chest, and used both hands to grab the trunk while other hands reached from every side, grabbing for anything to keep from being swept away. His clothes were torn into strips. Fresh red marks striped his face, ears, and arms where nails had ripped through him. His breath burned against my ear as he told me not to be afraid because he was there. Then, with a strength I had never imagined his thin body could hold, he turned and planted one hand against the tree while the other lifted me upward. He told me to step on him and reach for the branch above. My hands and feet shook so badly I could hardly obey. I scrambled like an animal over his back until at last I caught the branch, but I had no strength left to climb higher. I hung there halfway up while Hayashi tried again and again to push me up with one hand, but his strength was gone. He looked up at me once, then let go with his free hand and used every last bit of power to fling me higher. In the very next second, the crowd caught him. He vanished beneath reaching hands and bodies. I screamed his name until my chest tore, but the air was already full of so many voices that no one could ever have known which cry was mine.

Hundreds died in the New Year's Eve stampede. Hayashi was lucky. He didn't die. But his head had been crushed hard enough to cause bleeding in the brain and damage the nerves. I didn't let the doctor finish his explanation before demanding to know when Hayashi would wake up. The doctor closed the chart and said he didn't know. I stood by the bed looking at Hayashi's closed eyes. He looked as if he were sleeping, the corners of his mouth curved just enough to seem almost smiling. I had never seen him smile that way before. In my memory he was always laughing with his whole mouth open, all his teeth bright as summer sunlight. I cared for him for two full years before he showed any real response at all, first a slight movement of the fingers, then a shift in his gaze. Illness had come down on him like a mountain, and it receded like thread being pulled from silk. I told him that thread or no thread, as long as he woke up, I didn't care what it took. Kaito found me a year into Hayashi's hospitalization. Life can be strange that way, like hide-and-seek. When I was looking for him, he never came out. The moment I gave up, there he was. He said he had seen a photograph from the stampede while entering a photography competition. A reporter had captured the exact moment Hayashi was lifting me toward the tree. He tracked the image back until he found me. I laughed and said that was sketching after all, taking something alive and pinning it onto paper until time seemed to flow backward. Kaito looked at me and had nothing to say. Who could have guessed that an old joke would be proved true that way? I smiled and told him to go. Looking at Hayashi asleep in the bed, I said softly that I had already found the safest place of all and no longer needed anyone to teach me how to climb trees.

At the hospital, when boredom swallowed me, I sorted through the things I'd kept over the years. When I found the stack of lost-item notices I had never had the chance to put up, I thought that if you could post a notice for a missing object, or even for a missing person, then what were you meant to do when it was your heart that had gone missing? I stroked Hayashi's brow and asked whether I had made his heart disappear. Three years later, Hayashi finally called my name. Yuki. Yuki. Small, slurred sounds, but truly my name. After that he recovered quickly. Soon he could hold his own bowl and shovel rice into his mouth, even if he still slopped the soup all over the bed. The doctors themselves called it a miracle. So the world did have miracles after all. It was just that too few people believed hard enough to wait for them. On the day Hayashi was discharged, Kaito came too. He told me he was getting married. I smiled and congratulated him. He glanced at Hayashi, then smiled and congratulated me in return. We all stood there blessing each other as if every pain and disaster had finally passed and everyone had arrived at a happy ending. We laughed and talked without a trace of sorrow on the surface. Just before he left, Kaito asked if I would come to the wedding. I hadn't yet answered when Hayashi rolled his chair up behind me and said of course I would, because Kaito had once been the most important person in my life. Kaito's bride was dazzlingly beautiful. I arrived late to the wedding and the ceremony had already begun. He and his bride were onstage bowing to both sets of parents while the emcee told jokes to make the guests laugh. Kaito was made to call out to his mother louder and louder while everyone clapped and shouted that they still couldn't hear him. He stood there sweating while his parents, cheeks rouged, lips painted, heads capped with funny hats and strings of peppers hanging from their ears, looked like the warmest clowns in some family circus. Watching them, I suddenly found it all funny. Life itself, I thought, is only a farce. Weddings and funerals alike are plays. Inside the play is life as we tell it. Outside the play is life as we live it. One is illusion; the other is solid and real. I turned to leave and heard someone call my name behind me. "Yuki, is that you?" I ran at once. I didn't dare look back, because I was terrified of seeing the desolation of the whole human world in that pair of eyes. Footsteps chased after me. Kaito shouted, "Mom!" The bride shouted, "Mother!" Her husband shouted, "Wife!" But I was the only one who couldn't bring myself to cry, "Mother." Outside the hotel, snow had begun to fall. The first day snow ever fell had also been the day I was born. Those white flakes spun and vanished the moment they touched warm skin, like shooting stars dying at the edge of touch. But I knew that what filled the sky then was neither shooting stars nor falling snow. It was the sea of fate. And whenever it swept over me, it became a disaster large enough to drown me whole.