I Miss Him Too, Somewhere

Kamiya Tsunetoshi was famous, and so, gradually, Kamiya Natsuki became known to everyone as well. She found that deeply annoying. There had once been a time when she sincerely believed that having an older brother was the happiest thing in the world. Now, without warning, she sometimes caught herself praying for Martians to invade the earth, just so they might cart Kamiya Tsunetoshi away and dissect him as a specimen. To be honest, Tsunetoshi was handsome. Even Seiran High's terrible uniform, white with blue stripes and hopelessly uncool, somehow looked crisp and striking on him. A boy with delicate features and a cold expression was always going to draw attention. It only helped that he fought like a demon.

But Natsuki really did remember that there had once been a gentler, brighter version of him. Back then, Kamiya Tsunetoshi had been cheerful and warm, with good grades and impeccable manners. Almost everyone who met him liked him. Most important of all, he had been a very, very good brother. Natsuki loved red-bean pastries and soy milk, and he always remembered. Later, though, the whole of Seiran High knew this much: in Class 1-B, there was a girl named Kamiya Natsuki whose older brother was a delinquent called Kamiya Tsunetoshi.

Every person who had ever bullied Natsuki seemed, sooner or later, to end up in a place called the hospital.

It was probably from then on that they stopped believing the other was irreplaceable.

Once, Tsunetoshi had walked ten minutes at dawn to the little shop on the corner just to buy soy milk for her. He would tuck it under his clothes so that when he handed it to her, it was still warm. Natsuki was terrible at physics, and before midterms he would tutor her late into the night. Yet after that one terrible bout of flu, he suddenly changed as if his whole nature had been rewritten. So perhaps even more than ten years together is not enough to fix a person's character firmly in place.

That was the most frightening summer of Natsuki's life. The flu came in hard and fast. House after house shut its doors as if one extra word might carry infection through the street. Naturally, Natsuki got a fever too. She lay alone in bed and felt tired just turning over. Her parents had gone to work. Her brother had gone to school. The house was so quiet she could hear only the clock ticking. Half asleep, she thought that if she died there like this, no one might even know. But when she next woke, the room was already dark, and Tsunetoshi was sitting beside her bed.

"Brother, get me some water," she croaked.

He got up, poured her a cup of warm water, and brought it to her. Just before placing it in her hand, he seemed to remember something, took a sip himself, and only then passed it back. "Here. It's not too hot. I'll get you two pills too."

That cold lasted a full week. By the time the city finally got a new vaccine and the school organized a mass injection, Natsuki had even prepared walnut pastries, Tsunetoshi's favorite. But that day he disappeared for no reason and did not come home all night. Their parents panicked and called every classmate they knew he was close to, but no one had any news. The whole family stayed awake through the night. Only as dawn approached did he return, unhurt, though the desolation on his face was frightening.

When they asked where he had gone, he refused to say. When the questions became too pressing, he finally said, "From today on, stop trying to control me."

That, of course, led to a beating. It was the first time Kamiya Tsunetoshi had ever been hit. He knelt in the middle of the wide living room while his father's belt lashed down again and again. Their mother stood nearby crying. Natsuki did not dare make a sound. Every blow felt as if it landed on her own heart. In truth, if Tsunetoshi had only softened and admitted fault, the whole thing would have passed. Their father was not cruel by nature, only driven mad by worry and anger. But Tsunetoshi was maddeningly stubborn. At last Natsuki could not bear it. She threw herself over him, hugged him hard, and cried out, "Dad, stop hitting him. He knows he was wrong. He really does."

Their father shouted at her to move, but she refused to let go. Only when the belt was finally thrown aside did Tsunetoshi lift his head, and even then there was no sign of apology in him. Yet in his eyes Natsuki saw a pain she had never seen before. In a low voice he said, "Why did they throw me away?"

It was raining hard outside that day. Quietly, almost invisibly, things changed from then on. Later, after Tsunetoshi was called in over and over for fighting, Natsuki finally understood that her brother was no longer the same person. It made her unbearably sad. During a break, Morikawa Emi came over carrying a huge bag of snacks and sighed dramatically. "Do you think your brother just suddenly stopped caring about life? By my count, he's thrown away a hundred and seventy love letters since the start of term." Natsuki lowered her head and copied down physics notes she would never fully understand. All the while she kept thinking that she could not understand Tsunetoshi either. Had he really been brainwashed by aliens?

In the middle of all the effort she spent mocking Morikawa Emi's hopeless love for Tsunetoshi, fate punished her hard.

The most ridiculous cliche in the world happened to Kamiya Natsuki. Love at first sight. Yes, she fell in love so completely she did not even know the boy's name. It happened after morning exercises, when she and Morikawa Emi were walking arm in arm back toward the classroom building, laughing and shoving each other. At the dark end of the corridor, where sunlight could not reach, she suddenly saw him with a girl. Tears trembled in the girl's eyes. She had fallen to the floor and was holding her knee with both hands. The boy in uniform bent carefully to examine the scrape on her leg.

"Brother, it hurts. I can't stand up."

"Don't cry. I'm right here, aren't I?"

It was a moment that seemed to go on forever. The boy turned slightly toward Natsuki's side of the corridor, and his smiling face struck her like sunrise. She had grown up with a specimen like Tsunetoshi beside her, so by then her resistance to handsome boys ought to have been ironclad. But for no reason at all, that warm, bright smile stayed in her heart a very long time.

If missing someone the moment you cannot see him counts as liking him, then Natsuki really did fall for Kashiwabara Nishiki. It turned out, by sheer coincidence, that he was in Tsunetoshi's class.

Tsunetoshi's information network was always absurdly efficient. One evening at sunset, after hesitating what felt like forever, he finally asked the girl humming behind him on the back seat of his bicycle, "I heard you've got a boyfriend."

Natsuki froze, then said, "No I don't. Don't listen to rumors."

The two of them sank into silence. The cries of shopkeepers along the road seemed unnaturally loud. The smell of milk tea drifted from somewhere nearby. After a long while, Natsuki asked, "Brother, Kashiwabara Nishiki is in your class, right?"

The boy pedaling the bicycle said nothing. He only pushed harder. The bike, which had been rolling smoothly, suddenly shot forward like an arrow. Natsuki screamed from the back. "Kamiya Tsunetoshi, you lunatic! Stop! I'm never getting on your bike again!"

The brakes screeched. Natsuki jumped down from the carrier, grabbed her schoolbag from the basket, slung it onto her back, made an ugly face at Tsunetoshi, and ran toward the bus stop ahead. Behind her, under the last light of sunset, the boy wore a look of pure hurt.

Natsuki decided to confess to Kashiwabara Nishiki one beautiful afternoon. Morikawa Emi, with heroic loyalty, wrote her a confession letter five pages long, full of stirring rhetoric. She declared that a letter like this was the unbeatable finishing move of any girl pursuing a boy. Natsuki asked, "Did you ever let my brother read one of these?" Emi got so angry she smacked a heavy physics book over Natsuki's head. "You ungrateful thing. You deserve to die crushed under the physics textbook you hate most."

Of course Natsuki knew that Emi had liked Tsunetoshi ever since entering school. That was probably why the two of them had become such close friends. Emi could always learn the freshest news about Tsunetoshi through Natsuki. That is what liking someone means sometimes, doesn't it? You make every possible effort to draw closer to him, and in the process even learn to care for his little sister. Love the house and you love the crow on the roof.

The righteous Morikawa Emi volunteered to ask Nishiki out for her. At lunch, when the classroom was quiet except for the turning of pages and the breathing of students dozing over their desks, Emi stormed into the second-year classroom and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Kashiwabara Nishiki, Kamiya Natsuki is waiting for you on the field. If you're going to accept her confession, then go." After five seconds of dead silence, the room exploded. The boy called Kashiwabara Nishiki got up in the middle of all the noise and walked out quietly while the cheers behind him grew even louder. At the back of the classroom, Kamiya Tsunetoshi lay folded over his desk, face buried in his arms. No one could see his expression. At last, exasperated, he stood and kicked over the desk beside him. Kashiwabara Nishiki's books scattered everywhere.

That finally silenced the room.

Tsunetoshi, without looking at anyone, walked out.

By the time Natsuki had not yet even managed to pull the confession letter from her bag, Kashiwabara Nishiki had already asked, "Kamiya Natsuki, what do you like about me?"

She froze. She had never truly thought about it. All she could do was give him a miserable little smile. Nishiki smiled too. "If you can get the Anpanman charm from the capsule machine at the school store within three days, then let's try going out." Then he turned and left, leaving Natsuki standing there in a daze.

The capsule machine? Anpanman?

For the next two days, Natsuki changed all her allowance into coins and stationed herself in front of that machine. It swallowed hundreds of coins and never spat out the toy she wanted. She was starting to lose hope. Morikawa Emi, sucking an ice pop, looked at Natsuki's fight to the death with the machine and said in a strange tone, "Hey. Let's just go home. It's almost dark."

Natsuki shook her head. "No. I have to get it today."

Emi sighed helplessly. "Stop being stubborn. If he really liked you, would he ask you to do something this ridiculous?"

Natsuki never lifted her head. Her face was already vanishing into the darkening evening. She shoved in the last coin. Still nothing. "I'm going to change more money. Wait for me."

Two minutes later she came back clutching a fistful of coins, only to find Morikawa Emi holding up the Anpanman charm and grinning. "Idiot. I got it in one try. I told you, when I'm around, nothing is impossible."

Natsuki flung herself at Emi. "Darling, you're my savior!"

Much later, when Natsuki saw that hateful little Anpanman charm hanging from Kashiwabara Nene's schoolbag, she finally understood that it had been something Nene liked. What she never learned was that Morikawa Emi had not gotten it from the machine at all. That night, Kamiya Tsunetoshi had pressed it into Emi's hand and said, "Here. Don't tell that idiot I got it."

That same week, Tsunetoshi spent half an hour blankly staring at the physics midterm paper that should have been his strongest subject. Then he drew a clumsy Anpanman on it and copied beneath it two melodramatic lines from somewhere. The paper was passed from teacher to teacher before finally being dropped back into his hands. Two grim-faced instructors sat opposite him in the student guidance room, two untouched cups of tea cooling between them. He had been called in after school and then left sitting there while no one said a word. At last Tsunetoshi found the whole setup so absurd he laughed.

One of the teachers spoke. "You think this is funny? What is this thing you drew on your test? What is this nonsense you wrote?"

Tsunetoshi answered honestly. "I drew the most popular character around lately, Anpanman. And I copied down two overdramatic lines from somewhere."

One teacher shook his head, pained. This had once been his finest student. "Go home," he said at last. "Bring one of your parents to school tomorrow."

Tsunetoshi stood, bowed, and said, "Yes, sir. Goodbye."

By then it was already late. The school lay under a wash of dim shadow. At the stair landing he saw Natsuki sitting on the floor, nearly asleep. He coughed twice. She jolted awake and, once she recognized him, whined as if nothing in the world were wrong, "Did the teacher buy you dinner? Why'd it take so long? I'm starving."

Tsunetoshi said coldly, "Didn't I tell you to go home first? I never asked you to wait here, idiot."

Natsuki ignored the word idiot completely and wrapped herself around his arm. "Brother, buy me udon. I haven't eaten it in forever."

They went down the stairs side by side. The yellow school lamps stretched their shadows long over the ground.

Inside the udon shop, the air was thick with good smells. They sat shoulder to shoulder while steam rose from the bowls before them. Natsuki had loved the udon there ever since childhood. Back when their allowance was tiny and eating out was forbidden, Tsunetoshi always moved all the beef from his own bowl into hers, claiming he was allergic. This time was no different. Soon her bowl was full of beef, and her eyes suddenly stung. Whatever else he had become, however unmanageable he looked to the rest of the world now, the way he cared for her had never changed. He might refuse to tell her what was in his heart, but she still knew with certainty that there was a reason behind all his changes.

He always ate quickly. Once his bowl had been emptied in a whirlwind, he asked, "Things still going all right with Kashiwabara Nishiki?"

She had a mouthful of beef and only managed, "More or less. I asked him to go to the library with me this weekend, but he said he had to help his sister study. He really is a good brother."

Tsunetoshi did not continue the subject. He only told her to eat faster. She obediently bent over the bowl. Yet for some reason, every time she passed Kashiwabara Nene on campus, Nene glared at her viciously and ran away. Nene was Nishiki's younger sister, the same girl who had hurt her leg in the corridor that day. Morikawa Emi only shrugged and said, "She probably has a bit of a brother complex. Since you're the outside invader, you'll just have to put up with the eye daggers." Natsuki sighed. "I really do want to get along with her."

Emi laughed. "Really? Could you get along with your brother's girlfriend?"

Natsuki considered this seriously, then said, "I'd try. It would be strange suddenly having another person there, though."

Emi leaned close. "If that person were me, do you think it would be easier?"

Natsuki pushed her away with exaggerated disgust. "The idea of calling you sister-in-law gives me chills."

There was no mock scuffle this time. Morikawa Emi turned away and sat on the desk. In a low voice she said, "Actually, Natsuki, I know it already. Your brother and I are impossible. From beginning to end, he has never looked at me properly. But do you know something? On the day the new students entered school, he stood on the stage and gave the welcoming speech for the whole school. From where I sat, the sunlight behind him made a huge halo. He looked so high above everyone else. From that day on, I've gone on looking up at him. I kept thinking that maybe one day he would finally see me. But he never once lowered his eyes. Not once. So how could he ever see me? Natsuki, do you think I'm pathetic?"

Her voice trembled. Natsuki got up, came behind her, and wrapped her arms around her. She knew Emi was crying. She also knew Emi never cried in front of other people. So all Natsuki did was lend her a shoulder. "Idiot. You have no idea how good you are. If Kamiya Tsunetoshi doesn't like you..."

Then she said it.

"Then I curse him to spend his whole life unable to be with the person he loves."

At the time, Natsuki had no idea how cruel those words were. She only ached for her friend, who loved so humbly and got nothing back. She did not know there was someone else who longed for love even more desperately than Morikawa Emi.

By the third time Kashiwabara Nishiki canceled on Natsuki and refused to go to the library, she finally lost her temper. They had been together for only two months. No matter where they went, Kashiwabara Nene followed like a tail and could never be shaken off. Natsuki shouted, "You promised we'd study together this weekend."

Nishiki apologized quietly. "I'm sorry. But Nene says her stomach hurts. Mom and Dad aren't home. How can I leave her there alone? Next week, all right? Next week I'll definitely go with you."

Natsuki felt speechless. "What is wrong with her? Every time we make plans, she suddenly gets a stomachache. Is her stomach sick forever?"

She could tell Nishiki was upset. The moment she said something against his sister, he turned cold. Natsuki felt a heavy pain rise in her chest. She had never even dared ask him the most obvious question: In your heart, Kashiwabara Nene is ten thousand times more important than me, isn't she?

She never dared ask.

And then the thing she feared most happened anyway. The boy she liked stood in front of her and said awkwardly, "Kamiya Natsuki, let's break up. Nene's grades have dropped badly because of all this. If it goes on, it won't end well. I do like you. But I'm sorry."

Later, when the school organized a seaside training trip, Natsuki brought the swimsuit she had been saving and never dared wear before. She clung desperately to her tiny, wounded pride. She did not want to be compared to anyone, least of all Kashiwabara Nene.

The beach was crowded. The happiest part of the day was lying on the warm sand beneath fierce sunlight and sharing a drink with your closest friend. Even snacks that were usually dismissed as junk tasted wonderful there. Kamiya Tsunetoshi lay alone under the shade of a tree, where the sunlight could not quite reach. His eyes were shut, and he seemed to be asleep. Natsuki grew bored of sorting shells and finally went over to lie beside him.

"Hey. Brother. Are you awake?"

"Mm."

"Actually, I'm really unhappy. Why does the word abandonment even exist in the world? I hate that word so much."

"I hate it too."

"But if you're the one who gets abandoned, no matter how much it hurts, there's nothing you can do about it, right? I swear from now on I will never be the one who gets abandoned. I can abandon other people. No one gets to abandon me again."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Brother, don't worry. I will never abandon you. Not in this lifetime."

The boy said nothing. He only turned onto his side and hid his face, so that no one could see the two hot tears sliding down from his eyes into the sand and vanishing there.

Then, on one heavy afternoon, the head of student guidance led a bespectacled little elementary-school boy into a second-year classroom. He told the child, "Don't be afraid. Point out who took your money." The noisy room fell silent all at once. Everyone stared at the boy's freckled face. Overwhelmed by so many searching eyes, he trembled a little. From behind his glasses, his eyes moved from left to right like a scanner until they landed on Kamiya Tsunetoshi in the back row.

Under his desk, Tsunetoshi's fists clenched hard. He warned the boy with his eyes: if you say one word, you're dead.

The boy shivered, then turned to the teacher and said, "Sir, it wasn't anyone in this class. I remember now."

Only then did Tsunetoshi finally breathe. The three hundred yen in his hand felt damp enough to drip.

Not long after, he overheard two girls whispering in the corridor. "Did you hear that Kamiya Natsuki got dumped by Kashiwabara Nishiki?" "No way. She's pretty..." "Completely true. Last week I had red-bean shaved ice with Kashiwabara Nene. You should've heard how pleased she sounded telling me that her brother dumped Kamiya Natsuki."

The moment Natsuki stepped into the classroom, Tsunetoshi had already grabbed Kashiwabara Nishiki by the collar and hurled him out of his seat. His fist landed mercilessly on Nishiki's gentle face. The other boy had no chance at all to defend himself. Not one person nearby dared pull them apart. Only when Kashiwabara Nene threw herself over the bloodied Nishiki and screamed, "You madman! You're not touching my brother!" did the fight stop.

By the time Natsuki reached the room, that was the scene before her. Kamiya Tsunetoshi stood in the middle of the classroom, both fists clenched tight, his whole body shaking with rage. At his feet lay a badly beaten Kashiwabara Nishiki and the hysterically sobbing Kashiwabara Nene.

Her mind went blank. She thought only one thing: Tsunetoshi hit someone.

She did not know where the strength came from, but she rushed forward and slapped him hard across his handsome face. Everyone froze, including Tsunetoshi. The room went so quiet that even Nene stopped crying. Then Natsuki heard her own voice, clear and absolute:

"From today on, stay out of my life, Brother."

In the pocket of Tsunetoshi's trousers was the teddy-bear necklace Natsuki had wanted for so long. He had finally saved enough to buy it for her coming birthday.

But she had said: from today on, stay out of my life.

Seventeen years went by like that. Perhaps they would never again believe, with the old stubborn certainty, that the other was irreplaceable.

Their parents had reached the end of their strength. One day they asked Tsunetoshi, "Would transferring schools help?"

With no expression at all, he said, "Please help me transfer to another city. I'll take care of myself there. I won't act out anymore."

After a silence, their father said only, "All right." Then came the muffled sound of their mother's crying.

At last he had decided to leave. There was nothing left for him there to hold on to.

He kept trying to remember that carefree smiling face, tried and tried until in the end he could not remember anything clearly at all.

Seventeen years earlier, when Natsuki had only been two months inside their mother's womb, their parents had been full of joy at becoming mother and father. Then, outside their building, they found a bright-eyed baby boy in an old basket. That was the one-year-old Kamiya Tsunetoshi.

He had been left alone at the entrance to that apartment building, exposed to sun and rain, and it was this kind-hearted couple who took him in. From then on he had a warm home. He had parents. He had the sweetest little sister in the world. They grew up together in simple happiness until that summer, when the flu ran mad through the streets of the city. While looking for medicine for his sister, he found their mother's old childcare diary. All the truth was suddenly laid open before him. Night after night after that, he thought only this: why did they abandon me? Who am I? Where is the place I truly belong?

That unknowable emptiness swallowed him whole.

Then he would see Natsuki's familiar warm smile and hear her say, Brother, I will never abandon you.

And he would think that perhaps the world was still worth believing in.

Could there be someone like that? Someone who witnesses your growing up and shares each joy and sorrow of your life. Could there be someone like that? Someone who claims to be allergic to beef so he can leave all the good pieces for you. Could there be someone like that? Someone brave enough to drink from your cup during the height of a terrible flu, just to make sure the water he gives you is not too hot.

Could there be someone like that, who will do things he hates in order to buy you the gift you want? Could there be someone like that, who thinks all the time only of protecting you from harm? And could there be someone like that who finally hears you say with your own mouth: stay out of my life?

For a long time after Kamiya Tsunetoshi left, Natsuki dreamed about him almost every night. Perhaps she herself never truly understood why she had liked Kashiwabara Nishiki. Maybe it was only because on that day in the corridor, he had said to his sister, I'm right here, and once, long ago, someone else had said the same kind of thing to her.

Morikawa Emi would often ask, "Do you think your brother is ever coming back?"

Natsuki always shook her head and said she didn't know. Only at the very end did she add softly, "Actually, I miss him too."

Then the two of them would hold each other and cry as hard as they could.

Probably we will never again be the way we once were, when we believed that neither of us could ever be replaced.