The Bluebird of Happiness Never Lost Its Way

Ono Momoko never forgot the first time she saw Asano Shu.

It was one storm-struck afternoon in 1999. Fourteen-year-old Momoko had been caught in a sudden downpour and stood under the awning outside a supermarket, soaked through, clutching a schoolbag whose stitching had sadly split open. Her thin white summer blouse clung tightly to her body, making her look all the bonier and frailer.

Beneath the awning there was a tiny patch of dry sky. Outside it, rain crashed down in sheets. People in plain raincoats and bright umbrellas hurried by. Momoko saw several girls from her class pass laughing together under their umbrellas. She hesitated for a very long time, but in the end she never made a sound.

Could she walk home under their umbrella?

Could they go home together?

Such simple words were, to Ono Momoko, the hardest syllables in the world to utter.

Her mother said she had once been a lively little girl, the sort who loved to sing, dance, and laugh, who had happily performed nursery songs in front of every uncle and aunt she could find. But for some reason, after she started school she became quieter and quieter, until she hated speaking and hated being noticed, like a little cat that had somehow caught muteness.

When Asano Shu came charging in through the curtain of rain with a basketball under his arm, Momoko was lost in thought. She saw him bend himself nearly double as he sprinted in from the street corner to the supermarket entrance. As he passed her, a few cold drops splashed onto her face.

A few seconds later, he leaned half his body back out and said to her, "Hey, do you have fifty yen? We go to the same school."

He puffed out his chest a little proudly, showing off the school badge pinned there.

Momoko looked at him. After a long pause, she shifted her schoolbag to one hand, felt along the side pocket with the other, and took out a gold-colored coin. When she handed it to him, she noticed that he was staring upward at the awning with a strange expression, his face a little red. Then, when he took the coin, he even forgot to say thank you.

It was the last coin Momoko had on her. If the rain didn't let up, she had been planning to use it to call home for help.

But now she had no money at all.

At fourteen, besides being unable to ask anyone for help, Ono Momoko also had another fatal flaw:

she did not know how to refuse.

She had no idea how to say no to anyone, even when she desperately wanted to. As with just now, her long silence had, in a sense, been a refusal. But Asano Shu, at that age, would never have understood that.

Soon his face disappeared behind the supermarket curtain.

Momoko turned back toward the rain and stared hard at it, silently praying for it to stop. Their geography teacher had said summer thunderstorms in July came quickly and left quickly. Was that big-bellied bald man a liar? Ugh.

"Here."

Momoko looked up in confusion at the boy who had just borrowed fifty yen from her and was now smiling brightly at her. She remembered the name on his badge: Asano Shu.

When she didn't take what he held out, he grew anxious.

"Fifty yen, remember? If you don't drink it, it'll go to waste."

Seeing that she still looked baffled, he hurried on.

"The auntie who owns this supermarket and I are tight. If I pay a little for ingredients, she'll let me borrow her small hot plate. I cook instant noodles here all the time. You got drenched, and I didn't want you catching cold. I was making some anyway."

Only then did Momoko accept the paper cup. It was still steaming.

The ginger was so spicy it made her whole face scrunch up, but once the first heat passed, sweetness rose softly in her throat. Without meaning to, she lowered her head and took another sip.

"Well?" Asano Shu looked full of confidence in his own skill. "Good, right?"

"It's... okay."

She had wanted to praise him. Instead, what came out made the boy's proud brows sag at once into a disappointed little angle.

"Just okay?"

"Mm..."

Momoko felt awkward.

Please let the sky clear up already, she prayed.

Whether heaven heard her or the geography teacher was vindicated after all, the rain soon stopped for real. Once it stopped, even the sun came out again. Sunset spread in a warm gold, soft and fluffy as bread just out of the oven. The sky, washed by rain, was a startling blue.

Momoko picked up her schoolbag and was about to leave when Asano Shu suddenly called after her.

"Um... hey... classmate..."

When her puzzled eyes met his, his whole face turned red, as though he was terrified she might think he was the kind of boy who hit on girls at random. He held out a thin jacket with both hands as solemnly as a little mountain goblin presenting treasure in Journey to the West.

"Put this on."

Momoko glanced down at herself in confusion. Then, when her gaze reached her chest, she froze.

Because she had been soaked, her blouse was plastered to her skin. Because it was a thin white summer blouse, once wet it had turned transparent enough for her bra to show completely. When she had been hugging her schoolbag under the awning, it had not been so obvious. The moment she stepped out, anyone could see.

When she handed him the fifty-yen coin earlier, he must already have noticed.

No wonder he had blushed.

If she used her schoolbag to hide her front, her back showed. If she covered her back, the front was completely defenseless. In a panic, Momoko shoved on Asano Shu's jacket and bolted without looking back. Behind her she could hear him shouting in a hurry:

"H-Hey, remember to return the jacket! My name's Asano Shu!"

The next time she saw Asano Shu was after the new term began.

After that summer-evening storm, Momoko had taken the jacket with her every time she went to cram school, but she never met him again. Not until the opening ceremony of the new term.

He stood at the end of a line of students, laughing and jostling gently with the boy beside him. That boy reached up, tapped Shu on the head, and then neatly smoothed down the collar he had not bothered to fix.

Momoko opened her already large eyes a little wider.

All at once her head filled with scenes from the beautiful-boy comics she had read, and something inside her lifted inexplicably with delight.

She asked around until she learned what class Asano Shu was in, then went to find him after the ceremony with the jacket in hand. In the corridor outside his classroom she happened to meet the boy who had straightened his collar that morning.

He was completely unlike Shu, who was always smiling with a mischievous gleam. This boy's skin was a little darker. He wore a neat crew cut, and the plain white school shirt sat on him with crisp clean lines. His brows were dark as brushstrokes, the corners of his face cut cleanly as if with a knife, and his eyes were deep as water: long, beautiful, slightly upturned.

"Hi," Momoko asked, "is Asano Shu here?"

Her gaze dropped to the badge on his chest.

Kanzaki Seiji.

Seiji shifted a little and looked past her. "He is. Wait here a moment. I'll call him."

"Thank you."

Momoko stood in one corner of the corridor, in the slice of shade made by a jut of wall that blocked the sunlight. She saw Kanzaki Seiji say something through the classroom window and point in her direction.

The next instant, Asano Shu's head popped out of the window. The moment he saw her, his face broke into such a bright grin that for one second Momoko thought of the dachshund at her grandmother's house that always wanted to cling to her.

So in Momoko's head, the picture of Asano Shu running toward her through a spill of sunlight automatically transformed into a delighted little dog bounding over. She could not help smiling.

When Shu looked at her in surprise, she hurriedly smoothed her face again.

"Your jacket. Thank you, Senpai."

She bowed ninety degrees, the tiny motion betraying all the tension inside her. It was as though the girl who had just smiled so openly had vanished in the next breath, leaving only the silent, awkward little girl from beneath the rain-dark awning.

"No need to thank me."

Asano Shu took the jacket and saw how she was turning to flee at once. He called after her with a grin.

"Hey, classmate."

"Yes?"

"Smile more. Girls are cuter when they smile."

In the very next second, the whole beautiful scene shattered because of the impish way he said it.

Ugh. Wasn't that too much of his business?

Momoko stood there with her brow knotted for ages, managed another thank-you, and fled in a fluster.

"You like her?" Kanzaki Seiji asked, watching her retreating back.

"You like her," Shu replied solemnly.

Seiji slowly turned his head and looked at the twisted smile Shu was trying to hold back. Then he smacked the back of his head.

"What nonsense are you talking?"

And the two of them, exactly as they must already have done countless times, started bickering and shoving each other in the corridor like children.

That was the tail end of a summer when they were fourteen. The sunlight was gentle. Tree-shadows swayed. Summer flowers were already beginning to wither.

In memory, the sky back then was bluer, the clouds whiter, and time moved more slowly.

The school Momoko attended had junior high and senior high managed together. When she met Asano Shu, she had just entered her third year of junior high, while Shu and Kanzaki Seiji were upperclassmen in the senior division.

Both of them counted as famous figures in the high school. One laughed and joked all day, warm and easy to approach. The other was quiet and self-contained, always polite but never overly intimate with anyone.

Except Asano Shu.

Asano Shu and Kanzaki Seiji were known everywhere as inseparable friends.

Momoko thought it strange that two people so different could be such good friends. Perhaps this was what everyone meant by complementary. It was like how she, whom most classmates found hopelessly dull, somehow skyrocketed in popularity and became the "little sister" of the two best-known boys in the high school.

Maybe that was complementarity too.

Momoko and Shu complemented each other. Shu and Seiji complemented each other. And Shu was like a tube of all-purpose glue, sticking the three of them together.

Asano Shu liked pinching Momoko's cheeks. He said that although she was thin and tiny, her cheeks were soft and full, and pinching them gave him a perversely satisfying feeling. Back when they were not yet very close, he would often sneak in a quick pinch whenever no one was around. At that age Momoko did not know how to resist. She would just freeze in fright, eyes wide, staring at him as if he were an alien. Then Shu would laugh and pinch her again.

Seiji would often stand nearby with his arms crossed, glance at Momoko, and say to Shu, "Pervert. Your crimes against the flowers of the motherland are truly outrageous."

Shu would throw back his head and laugh like a television villain before lunging at Seiji and trying to pinch his face instead. But he was neither taller nor stronger than Seiji, so usually in a single round he would end up pinned and forced into an ignominious surrender.

Momoko always felt that she and Shu had become close by way of all that pinching, and that because of Shu, she and Seiji gradually became familiar too.

Seiji really was exactly as rumored. It wasn't that he was hard to get along with. He was hard to get close to. Everyday conversation and small requests were no problem. As long as everything stayed within the bounds of ordinary classmate friendship, he was unfailingly polite. But the moment anyone tried to cross that line and move nearer, he turned as cold as winter.

You took one step closer, and he retreated two.

The more desperately you wanted to know him, the farther he would hide, until at last he placed you on some invisible blacklist and kept you there forever.

Momoko thought that the only reason Seiji had not kicked her clean to Mars was probably that she had stayed obediently where she had stood at the beginning, never once trying to overstep.

Momoko's entrance exams went only so-so, but she scored just enough to continue on into the senior division of the same school. Asano Shu called and said he wanted to celebrate the end of her exams. In truth, it was just an excuse to drag everyone out together.

That day the three of them wandered a night market, buying fragrant grilled squid, spicy mutton skewers, and clouds of cotton candy. Shu was like a rabbit that could never stay still. Every time he spotted something interesting at a stall, he refused to move on. Then the next time they glanced up he had vanished and was already waving excitedly from some other spot, having discovered yet another marvel.

Kanzaki Seiji and Ono Momoko trailed after him like two attendants.

Some people are born to be held in everyone's palms. Even when you know they are naughty, willful, and bad-tempered, you still want to spoil them and indulge them.

Asano Shu was one of those people.

Even though Momoko was younger than Shu, once they had known one another a while she, like Seiji, began taking care of him without thinking. The Momoko who had always been ignored and overlooked was, in truth, a little envious of Shu. She envied how he glowed wherever he went, how easy it was for people to love him.

After the night market, Shu abruptly proposed that they climb the small hill at the Martyrs' Cemetery.

Momoko was afraid.

No matter how grandly it was called a martyrs' cemetery, it was still a graveyard, and it was already dark.

Shu slapped his chest and declared, "Ono Momoko, your Brother Shu will protect you."

Beside him, Seiji only smiled and said nothing.

At that moment the streetlamp lit Shu's hair, and moonlight fell into his eyes. The whole world seemed made of deep ink washed with soft orange and silver.

The path up the cemetery hill twisted through tall trees. There were no streetlights, and the branches blocked the moon. Visibility was poor. But once their eyes adjusted to the dark, the three of them climbed laughing and talking, and the fear gradually fell away. By the time they reached the top, they were drenched in sweat. They sat awhile beneath the monument to the fallen revolutionaries, letting the wind dry them as they looked down over a city full of lights and buildings pressed close together. For no clear reason, a heroic sadness rose in all of them.

After resting a while, they started down.

Unlike the joking, easy mood on the way up, Shu fell mysteriously silent on the way down. Seiji and Momoko were not especially talkative by nature, so the air grew even colder.

The sound of mountain wind passing through the treetops became unnaturally sharp.

As sweat cooled on her back, it turned clammy and miserable.

Walking on, Momoko suddenly realized that Shu, who had been just ahead of her, had vanished. She was about to turn around when she heard someone breathing right beside her ear.

A low, rasping breath from deep in the throat.

In that pitch-black cemetery, it was terrifying.

Every bloody scene from every horror film she had ever seen marched through her head at once. Too frightened to turn, she called out loudly for Asano Shu and Kanzaki Seiji. No one answered.

That breathing sounded again by her ear. Her scalp went numb.

Momoko was so scared she nearly cried, but she did not dare make another sound. Biting her lip, she forced herself to turn, only to be terrified all over again when something with a grotesque face sprang at her.

She never even saw clearly that it was only Asano Shu playing a prank.

She burst into tears and ran downhill.

She had gone only a few steps when someone seized her, pulled her into his arms, and soothed her gently.

"Don't be scared, Ono Momoko. It's us. The one who scared you was Asano Shu."

It was Kanzaki Seiji.

Momoko struggled and beat at him for a long time before she gradually calmed down. At last she understood his words. Still hiccuping from tears, she clutched at his shirt collar.

Shu, frightened by how violently she had reacted, stood nearby full of guilt and yet looking as though he might laugh at any moment.

Seiji held Momoko lightly by the shoulders, one hand patting her back as if he were comforting an aggrieved little cat.

He smelled faintly of mint.

His chest was warm.

At fifteen, Momoko still had tears hanging on her face, but her heartbeat had already become impossible to control.

Thud. Thud. Thud-thud-thud.

By the summer Momoko turned seventeen, the days she spent leaning on Asano Shu and Kanzaki Seiji were almost over. After July's furnace heat, both boys received the university acceptance letters they had hoped for. In September they would take the train together to Wuhan, a city where cherry blossoms lined the streets in spring.

One idle afternoon, the three of them went to see one last movie together.

Momoko remembered the film clearly. It was Blue Gate Crossing, a Taiwanese youth film. There were fresh-faced handsome boys and girls with pale, clean faces, white school shirts, bicycles always ridden too fast, tall parasol trees, and light flowing everywhere. In the film, the boy named Zhang Shihao says to the girl, If one day you start liking boys, remember to tell me.

The line was so lyrical that Momoko's tears fell at once.

Secretly she thought that in this life she would probably never have the courage to say to a boy, If one day you start liking girls, remember to tell me.

Because a boy like that, a boy so different from everyone else, even if one day he did begin to like girls, would never choose a plain, forgettable little girl like Ono Momoko.

Kanzaki Seiji looked past the Shu seated between them and handed Momoko a clean white tissue.

"Crying?"

Then he smiled and added, almost to himself, "Such a little girl."

Shu pinched her cheek and squinted at her through the reflected light from the screen.

"Little Momo, you're really adorable."

His eyes glittered.

By the time the movie ended, it was almost dusk. Momoko, Shu, and Seiji walked one behind another down a wide avenue lined with camphor trees. Then, on an otherwise clear day, thunder cracked. Clouds gathered at once, and fat raindrops began slamming down. Pedestrians without umbrellas were caught completely off guard.

Usually so careful of his behavior, Seiji suddenly gave a wild shout.

Shu wiped rain from his face, looked at Seiji smiling at him, and shouted too. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed right in Momoko's ear:

"Little Momo, you yell too!"

Rain struck so hard she could barely open her eyes. She cried out once, but in that pounding downpour, her thin little voice vanished like a leaf swallowed by the sea.

"Idiot, is that how you yell? Are you shy? Open your throat and shout!"

Shu ran forward into the rain, yelling like Tarzan, while passersby stared at him as though he were mad.

They had probably forgotten what it felt like to be seventeen.

For no reason, Momoko felt another wave of tears rise. Facing Shu and Seiji, she shouted meaningless sounds into the rain.

Shu, ten meters away, waved and shouted back, "That's more like it!"

And so the three of them ran and shouted like lunatics down that camphor-lined road in the rain of that summer.

It became one of the most precious scenes in Ono Momoko's life.

That summer, in that storm, Asano Shu looked straight into her eyes and shouted with all his strength:

"Ono Momoko, I like you, okay?"

Momoko wiped rain from her face. She suspected there were tears mixed in with it, because her eyes burned.

She did not know whether it was okay.

I like you, okay?

Okay?

Okay?

She watched that person's back again and again and cried out soundlessly in her heart, but never once asked the question aloud.

She had long since known the answer from his eyes.

Sourness welled up in her chest, then tore at her with pain.

Rain was wonderful. No one could see anyone else's tears, and even the salty smell of grief was washed away.

Another year passed. Momoko too was admitted to a university in Wuhan, only a lake away from the campus where Shu and Seiji studied. She often rode her bicycle over to see them.

What had begun as gatherings for three gradually became afternoons with only two, because Seiji grew busier and busier.

Shu would say, "Seiji's getting more and more charming. First he was department head, now he's student council president. Those junior girls are all dizzy over him."

And he would say, "Seiji's the only exchange student in our whole faculty who got in by special approval. Before this, they always came from the language department. It's the first time our school has won a slot."

The last time Momoko saw Seiji was on the eve of his departure to study abroad, at a little eatery near campus. The owner's little boy had an enormous head, and Momoko was crouched outside amusing him while Seiji and Shu talked inside.

Suddenly Seiji said, "When I come back, you two won't already have a son, will you?"

Momoko's finger had been poking the little boy's chubby cheek, leaving a deep dimple. In that instant it felt as if she had poked her own heart instead.

Shu looked at her back, then patted Seiji on the shoulder and said with a laugh, "Don't worry. We'll wait for you to come back before we do anything. So you'd better hurry home, all right? Don't make us wait too long."

Seiji lowered his head, smiling, and drank.

"Hard to say... You two should just do whatever you want. I don't even know when I'll be back."

This time he was not simply going as a one-year exchange student. A certain Dr. W at the foreign university thought highly of him, and there was every possibility that he would remain overseas to continue his degree.

"But you'll come back to visit family, won't you?"

"Round-trip airfare is expensive... I don't know."

Seiji tipped back the rest of his drink. When Momoko came over, she just happened to see one bright tear slide from the corner of his eye into his hairline, where it vanished at once.

Shu smiled.

"It's fine. You'll come back eventually. Seiji, remember what we used to say? When we're all old, we'll move to the same city. Then we can see each other all the time and talk whenever we want."

Momoko looked up at Shu. In the warm yellow light, he smiled with such easy certainty, as though he had complete faith that day would come. He was still the simple, kind, stubborn boy from memory. Time had only honed him into something more steadfast and more beautiful.

Like a diamond after cutting. Like jade after polishing.

That night Seiji got drunk. Shu helped him out of the little restaurant while Momoko followed behind carrying all three of their bags and coats. Watching the two of them from behind, she walked and wept.

Shu beckoned to her, then supported Seiji with one arm and patted her head with the other.

"My silly girl, what are you crying for?"

Momoko shook her head so hard that tears flew.

Then she threw her arms around both Asano Shu and Kanzaki Seiji, buried her face in Shu's chest, and said, "I love you. I love you.

I love you, love you, love you, love you."

Love begins no one knows where, and once it begins it runs deep.

Goodbye means meeting again.

At the end of the summer of 2007, Ono Momoko and Asano Shu held a grand wedding on Enoshima.

Kanzaki Seiji did not attend in the end. His career abroad was going better and better, and the day of his return remained endlessly distant.

Ahead of time he sent a generous money gift and a small wedding present for the couple.

The present was a thick stack of postcards. Each one bore a postmark from a different place and a handwritten blessing from Seiji.

Over the years he had gone to many places.

Over the years he had lived a busy life.

Over the years he had lived a brilliant life.

Over the years he had also remained, all the while, very lonely.

Seiji's loneliness did not come from a lack of friends. It came from a deep place inside him, from those loves that could not be spoken and the devotion that belonged only to youth.

On the night before the wedding, Momoko walked barefoot along the beach at Enoshima. Sea wind came in waves. The surf rose and fell softly in her ears. The wind filled her shirt like a sail.

The sky was strewn with stars, bright and hard as crushed diamonds on black velvet.

Momoko hugged her knees and sat on the soft sand, thinking of so many things. She thought of the shy, withdrawn girl she had once been. She thought of the ginger drink Shu had cooked for her. She thought of rain.

Then she bowed her head, deeply, deeply.

Warm tears spilled from the corners of her eyes.

Not because of regret.

Not because of sorrow.

Not because of longing.

But because the beauty of the past and the happiness of the present had suddenly become too much for the heart to hold.

She took out her phone and typed a message.

If one day you come to the beach at Enoshima, don't forget that I once sat here and thought about you all night long... After tonight, I will never again think of you this way, alone.

Seiji, I loved you, once.

From now on, there will only be one Asano Shu in my heart. There is no room left for you.

Kanzaki Seiji, you must be happy.

Momoko pressed send.

The number she sent it to was the one Seiji had used while he was still in the country. After all these years abroad, he had long since stopped using it.

She was only saying goodbye, in this way, to the Momoko who still could not let go of Kanzaki Seiji.

The first moment Momoko saw Seiji, joy had stirred inside her. The first time she stopped him in the corridor and asked whether Asano Shu was there, her palms had sweated. The first time he held her lightly in his arms on that black mountain path, her heart had pounded wildly.

But some things, like destiny, cannot be changed.

On that bright opening-ceremony morning, when the teenage Kanzaki Seiji casually reached over to straighten Asano Shu's collar, it was as if the ending of every story had already been written.

The bluer the sky, the sadder it seemed.

Even the warmest sunlight could not melt those scattered little shards of ice.

In that rain-lashed summer when Shu confessed to Momoko, only she saw the fire go out in Seiji's eyes for a single instant, and the sharp pain that crossed his heart. Every tiny change in his expression, every concealed glance, drove pain into her by double measure.

But what could Momoko do?

She could only pretend to know nothing, see nothing, and go on leaning her life against Asano Shu's love.

Kanzaki Seiji was like a poppy flower made flesh: handsome, seductive, and poisonous.

The love Momoko had borne for him was dark and fevered in her blood. Shu's love, by contrast, was healthy and new. Over the years, little by little, it had replaced the old blood in her body, until she had become Asano Shu's Ono Momoko.

A healthy, beautiful Momoko.

A happy, joyful Momoko.

How lovely yesterday's Momoko had been, crying over the ending of a movie.

How lovely yesterday's Shu had been, blushing at the sight of a girl's bra through a wet white blouse.

How lovely yesterday's Seiji had been too, making even the simplest comfort sound beautiful.

Momoko thought: just as Shu once said, when they are all old, they should move to the same city and live there together, so they can meet often and talk often. If such a day could come, how wonderful it would be.

If Seiji could be happy too, that would be enough.

Kanzaki Seiji, you must be happy.

Momoko turned to walk back toward where she was staying.

Just then, her phone chimed brightly with a new message.

She opened it, and her eyes widened at once, exactly the way they had years ago when Shu pinched her cheeks and she had never known how to react.

The screen read:

Momoko, thank you. I know you always understood. I promise I will make myself happy.

Seiji.

Momoko turned around.

For one instant she saw the boy Asano Shu and the boy Kanzaki Seiji standing shoulder to shoulder, smiling so beautifully and brightly that they seemed to light the whole night sky.

Then she blinked, and the boys were gone.

Standing before her were, unmistakably, her husband Asano Shu and his best friend Kanzaki Seiji.

And all at once tears fell like rain.