Let's Run Away Together

I don't remember when the habit began. I only know that now, in the middle of the night, I often wake with a start and sit alone on the empty balcony, turning the pages of a yellowed photo album by weak moonlight. I watch a little girl grow up from the spring of 1995 onward. I watch her smile in joy, in sorrow, in stubbornness, and then stop inside the light of 2009. A fine, close sorrow rises from somewhere deep inside me like ivy and wraps itself around every inch of skin until it reaches the bone. All those aging years suddenly break the locks on memory and come pouring back over me, inch by inch, until I drown in them. Morikawa Toya, do you know? I miss you so much.

I met Morikawa Toya when I was seven, in Wangchuan Children's Home. At the time I was wrestling with a group of boys older than I was over a doll. That doll was my only link to what little I remembered of home. If I lost it, I felt I would lose my whole past. The leader of the boys was called Fatty, a famous tyrant in the home. Standing head and shoulders above me, he held the doll over his head and shouted mockingly, "Come get it, little disaster!" In desperation I bit down on his flailing arm. He howled, burst into tears, and shoved me hard into the sand. Still crying, he screamed, "You're a disaster star! You killed your own parents! The headmistress took you in and you ruined her too! This place is being torn down because of you! We don't have a home because of you!" Then he scooped up a handful of sand and stuffed it into my mouth. That was the moment Morikawa Toya appeared. I don't know where he came from. He rushed in, knocked Fatty to the ground with one punch, pulled me up, and turned away without a word. Fatty sat in the dirt screaming for his mother while Toya led me across the blacktop playground, still clutching my injured hand with his small white fingers. I clung to the doll I'd won back. Sunlight fell over us and dragged long shadows at our feet. There was still grit in my mouth, but I couldn't stop staring at the hand holding mine. Pale, slender, almost delicate-looking. And yet that same hand had defeated the greatest bully in the whole orphanage. Admiration flooded me in one wide bright wave. At last he stopped in front of the headmistress's office and pushed open the door. Inside sat the headmistress and two strangers. He pushed me forward and said to them, "Dad, Mom, I want this one." At that age I understood adoption in the same way I understood the cafeteria's braised pork: the strongest child chose first. Only much later did I learn that his parents had come to the orphanage that day to adopt a child. Bored, he had slipped off on his own, wandered around, and found me being ganged up on. He later said that seeing me bullied like that without crying or making a fuss had made something inside him hurt. So he rushed in to save me. And just like that, without understanding how, I acquired a father, a mother, and him. When the headmistress came to see me off, she patted my head and said, "Cheng, be good in your new home and listen to your parents." I sat inside the Morikawas' elegant car, biting my lip and nodding at her through the window. The car had only just started moving when a loud cry broke out behind us on the quiet spring street. I pressed against the glass and saw Fatty running after the car, crying and wiping his eyes. Was he reluctant to see me go? Of course not. In the entire children's home, the only one who had ever truly been kind to me was the headmistress. Everyone else treated me like a plague. Like a curse. I had known that for years.

When I was born, my mother died. Our family had never been wealthy, and after that it grew poorer still. My father worked himself half to death to give my older sister and me a better life, until one day he was crushed under a machine at work. That was when the word disaster attached itself to me. In the bits of memory I still possess from those years, the only people who ever treated me well were my father and my sister. Once, to fulfill some childish dream of mine, my sister spent three months collecting scrap just to buy me that doll. I was too young then to understand the wounds on her hands; I only knew I was happy. Later, an aunt said she would take us to another city. At the train station she told me, "Cheng, be good. Stand right here. I'll take Yueran over there and come right back." I had always been obedient because I somehow believed that if I listened to adults carefully enough, they would like me a little more. So I stood there hugging my doll until darkness fell. The whole station emptied out until only a few weak lamps and I remained. Alone, alone. The wind hurt my bones. After that my memory breaks. The next thing I knew, I was waking in the children's home with the headmistress smiling gently beside me. "Grandma will take care of you," she said. "From now on, this is your home." I nodded slowly and saw flakes of snow drifting past the window. Winter had already arrived.

The Morikawas took me to a bright, prosperous neighborhood full of apartment blocks and clean streets. Everything was strange: the house, the room, the boy with the towel who carefully wiped the cuts on my face and body and said, "No one will ever bully you again." "Who are you?" I asked, my first words of the day. He blinked, then smiled. "I'm Morikawa Toya. From today on, I'm your brother." "Brother?" "Yes. A brother is someone who protects you forever." Then he picked up a square box from the table and fiddled with it while I watched, puzzled. A sharp click sounded, a white flash filled my eyes, and he lowered the camera with a grin. "My dream is to become a photographer. From now on, you'll be my model." Perhaps it was that burst of light that changed everything. The stars seemed to fall. Time slowed. And in that stillness the boy in front of me seemed to bloom into brilliance. From that moment on, all my life was quietly told the same thing: this boy would become the deepest bond in my heart.

Time rolled forward as if wheels had been fitted beneath it, and suddenly it was the summer of 2001. I had already lived there for seven years. Morikawa Toya's parents loved me as their own. I called them Father and Mother, but I never once called Toya Brother. He never complained. The days were quiet and happy, and little by little I forgot everything, even the word disaster. Then came my fourteenth birthday. I was alone at home. Father and Mother had gone out early with Toya, saying they were preparing a special gift for me. I sat on the sofa and waited from day to dark. Rain began. Wind came through the cracks in the windows. A storm broke, the electricity failed, and only the snowy hiss of the television flickered in the dark. Then the phone rang. I picked it up. A cold female voice said, "Is this Miss Sakakibara Cheng? Your family has been in an accident. Please come at once." My mind burst apart. I ran. In the emergency room lay two bodies. My parents. That very morning they had smiled and promised me a birthday I would never forget. Now they lay motionless beneath white sheets. I dug my nails into my palms and felt no pain. The world had become noise. Then I heard someone behind me say, "Cheng... don't look." It was Toya. His face was white as torn paper, his eyes red beyond anything I had ever seen. He tried to walk toward me, dragging his right leg unnaturally behind him. Then I finally cried and slid down against the door while he wrapped me in his arms. The night was cold like water. So was my whole world.

Their funeral was held in late autumn. Everyone who came looked at me and shook their heads. They said it was because of me the Morikawa family had been shattered. After seven silent years, the word disaster was unearthed again and hung back around my neck. Some relatives offered to take Toya in on one condition: I would be sent back to an institution. Toya refused without hesitation. After they left, I asked him why he didn't send me back to the orphanage. He smiled and said, "Cheng, we only have each other now. Neither of us gets to give up on the other." The years that followed should have been hard, but around Toya they never felt that way. He always arranged everything as well as he could. At sixteen he had already begun carrying the full weight of life on his bent leg and kept carrying it until he was twenty. By then I was in my final year of high school, while he was a second-year university student in the city. I studied with desperate diligence, because good grades meant scholarships, and scholarships meant easing his burden even a little. Sometimes I would cut class and ride Bus No. 10 all the way to his campus, stand behind the poplars beside the basketball court, and watch him for no reason at all, smiling like a fool. Toya owned only two white shirts for the whole summer, and yet I never found anyone else who could wear a white shirt as beautifully as he did. At school he was famous: excellent grades, clean looks, and the story of the boy who raised his younger sister alone. Girls admired him constantly. They would say to me, "Cheng, I really envy you. Morikawa Toya only smiles that happily when he's with you." I would nod and smile, but in truth I envied them more. They had the right to like him openly. They could confess. I could not. I was his sister. And the one I envied most of all was the girl named Nakahara Yue. She was so lovely that the first time I saw her, I liked her immediately. Watching her walk with Toya, both of them smiling, I felt a grief so deep it seemed bottomless. If she became his girlfriend, I thought, I wouldn't even have the right to hate her.

One afternoon I was waiting for Toya at the bus stop when I saw him coming toward me with Nakahara Yue, both of them laughing. My smile had not even settled on my mouth before Yue said, "Cheng, I'm so sorry. We've been working on a project. Your brother won't be able to go home with you for a while." I looked at Toya. He reached out and ruffled my hair. "When the project is done, I'll make it up to you, okay?" I nodded and forced a smile that hurt. Then I hopped on the bus alone. I spent the whole ride staring at them in my head. At a red light, I looked out the window and saw beside the bus a silver convertible. Behind the wheel sat a man with brilliantly dyed red hair, exactly the kind of rich wastrel I disliked on sight. So I made an involuntary sound of contempt. Unfortunately, he heard it. He turned, stared at me for one long second, and when the light changed, the convertible followed the bus all the way to my stop. I got off braced for trouble. Then a horn blared and a familiar voice shouted, "Hey, little disaster!" I turned in disbelief. The owner of the red hair had jumped out and was grinning at me with peach-blossom eyes. "Recognize me? I'm Fatty." It took me a full second to fit the handsome man in front of me to the lump of flesh from my childhood. Apparently pigs, too, have a future. "I go by Kamiya Raku now," he said cheerfully, slinging an arm over my shoulder. "Been ages. You missed me, didn't you? Come on. Big brother's taking you out to eat." Before I could answer, he bundled me into the car in one smooth motion and drove like a man possessed. I barely listened. Out the window the city rushed past: commercial towers, bronze statues, old red-brick houses, and then a construction site. In one glance, amid the dust and machinery, I saw a figure I knew instantly. "Stop the car!" I ran before Raku had properly braked. And there was Morikawa Toya, carrying a sack of lime on his back, walking slowly under the weight of it, sweat rolling down his face. The bones of his arms stood out white with strain. I walked up to him and took his hand without a word. "Please move aside," he said automatically, not yet looking up. "Morikawa Toya," I said. He froze. Then I turned and, with him in tow, said to Kamiya Raku, "Please drive us home."

It was like returning to four years earlier. I sat treating the scrapes on Toya's hands and shoulders while he tried to explain. This boy, who should have grown carefree and whole, had lost his parents and injured his leg because of me, and even now he was still grinding himself into the dirt. The pain of it filled me with guilt so deep it made breathing hard. He drew me into his arms and said quietly, "The money our parents left is long gone. My part-time jobs can barely keep us alive. But you'll be starting university soon, and that's my dream for you. This is the fastest way to earn enough. You have to understand." I looked at him and asked why he hadn't told me sooner. He said Fatty, no, Kamiya Raku, had offered to lend him the money for my tuition. Toya said he would accept the loan if he had to. Then, in the same breath, he told me not to have anything to do with Raku. Why? Because once a bully, always a bully, he said stiffly, unable to explain himself any better. I laughed and touched his hair. "Idiot."

Of course I never let Kamiya Raku pay my tuition. Instead, I went to Nakahara Yue, because aside from Toya she was the only person I trusted. She found me work as a resident singer at a dance hall in the city center. I only had to sing five nights a week, and the pay was unusually good. To keep Toya from suspecting anything, I asked the club owner for an advance and then gave that money to Toya, pretending it was Raku's loan. Raku watched me paint smoky makeup around my eyes and groaned in dismay. "If you just say the word, I'll hand over my credit card right now. Why are you doing this? And why do I have to cover for you? If your brother finds out, he'll kill me." I smiled and told him I simply didn't want to owe anyone. He howled that this wasn't pride, it was world-weariness. Then I pushed him aside and went onstage. Under the turning lights, I sang. The world grows still. Time stops. Where are you to lean on? Where am I to wait? When the lights go dark and the city falls asleep, which of us ever remembered? And then the singing stopped all at once. Police had rushed in. Someone had reported that the dance hall was selling drugs. Everyone was taken in for questioning. I sat on a cold bench at the station, feeling as cold inside as the metal beneath me, because I was underage, and the police had already called my guardian. Which meant that Morikawa Toya would come and collect his little sister from a drug raid at a nightclub. Raku patted my shoulder and told me he was there. I looked up at him weakly, forced a smile, and then saw Toya standing in the doorway with Nakahara Yue behind him. His eyes were full of hurt. "Sakakibara Cheng," he said. "Come here." Raku caught my hand, but I shook him off and pushed myself up against the wall. I walked toward Toya one step at a time. Then his palm cracked across my face. The sound echoed in the empty station hall. I bit back tears and looked at his shaking hand. "How could you make me feel so..." He couldn't finish it. He only said, "Cheap." Then he turned and ran out. Every word he spoke cut like metal. Behind me Raku slammed his fist into the wall.

That same night I went straight to the dance hall owner, put the money back in front of him, and said I was done. Smiling, he set a bottle in front of me and said, "Drink this, and you can leave whenever you like." I took it and swallowed it all in one go, my head splitting with the taste of the liquor. I left without looking back. Outside, Toya and Raku came running toward me. I grabbed Toya and said, "Morikawa Toya, I'm not doing it anymore. Please don't be angry." He held me tightly and said that Raku had already told him the whole truth. He apologized. I smiled at him, and then the whole world tilted and went black. I woke a day later in a white hospital bed. Toya sat beside me and exhaled in relief when he saw my eyes open. I tried to sit up but had no strength at all. "Let's go home," I said. "Hospitals are expensive." He looked at me, and a tear ran down his face. "Cheng, I can't take you home. This is a detox center. The doctor says there was a massive amount of sedatives in your system." Sedatives. In one instant I remembered the dance hall owner's strange smile and understood everything. A doctor with a badge called the family to leave. Toya gripped my hand hard and said, "I know you didn't mean any of it. Be good. Listen to the doctors. In three months, I'll come take you home." Home. Was I still capable of going back there?

The dream afterward had no end. Black fish with sharp teeth swam through my hair in an ocean turned red with blood. When the heavy iron gate finally opened behind me three months later, August sunlight stabbed my eyes. Someone called my name. It was Kamiya Raku, with Toya standing behind him. I whispered, "Morikawa Toya," but only I heard it. Then I ran like a mad thing and threw my arms around Raku. Over his shoulder I saw Toya's eyes turn red. He turned away and limped off slowly, one leg dragging, while my own tears burst loose. That night we all sat around a table Toya had prepared. I held on to Raku's arm and said with a bright smile, "Brother, I'm going with Kamiya Raku. To Scotland. Thank you for taking care of me all these years. From now on, Cheng won't trouble you anymore." Toya smiled faintly and said, "After all these years, that's the first time you've called me brother. I just didn't expect to hear it now." Then he went to fetch the old camera. "Cheng, let your brother take a few more pictures. I always said I'd photograph you until you grew old, but now I can only take them in advance." I shook my head and told him one was enough. I would never be nineteen again anyway. The shutter clicked. I smiled like a flower. That was the last thing I gave him. Late that night, Raku sat beside my bed and watched me in silence. I thanked him for helping me keep so many lies in place. He looked at me with an ache so obvious it hurt to return it. "Cheng," he said, "I really did want to take you away. I've loved you for fifteen years. When we were kids you looked indifferent to everything. I bullied you just to make you notice me. I called you little disaster because you became exactly that for me. After you, there was no room in my heart for anyone else." I stared, stunned. He tucked the blanket around me, bent, and kissed my forehead very lightly. "Goodnight. I'll take you away from everything that hurts you."

Then Nakahara Yue came to me like a ghost from another dream. When I woke one night, she was standing at my bedside with hatred in her face. She threw the album down onto my lap and said, "Morikawa Toya is gone. He left this and disappeared." The wind blew through the open window, and the pages fluttered madly, racing through the years of me until they ended in blank white sheets. "I loved him so much," she said coldly, "and yet he gave everything to you. Why should someone like you be loved that way?" Then she admitted it had been she who had reported the dance hall, hoping to make Toya despair of me. I asked why. She grabbed at my hair in fury. The old doll I'd kept under the quilt fell to the floor. I lunged for it and cradled it in both arms. At once her face changed. White. Trembling. "Where did you get that doll?" she whispered. "My sister left it to me," I said. She stared, and then suddenly began laughing through tears. She ran out. After that I never saw Nakahara Yue again. When I asked Raku where she had gone, he only looked at me with blurred eyes and said nothing. Later I stopped asking, because I saw the answer myself in a small item on the last pages of the newspaper: a dance hall owner had been murdered by a university girl. And then I remembered another dream. In it Nakahara Yue sat beside my bed and laughed first, then cried, each tear cold as it struck the back of my hand. "I actually have a beautiful name," she said. "My little sister used to call me Yueran. Sister Yueran. My little sister is Sakakibara Cheng. Everyone said she was a disaster, but I knew she was the kindest angel in the world. A long time ago I was still little, all I could do was cry on a fast-moving train and watch her fall away from me. I lost her. That's why I've always hated girls our age who were loved by everyone. If my own little sister had been beside me, she would have been like that too. Cheng, I'm a fool. You and she had the same name, but I never imagined you were the same person. I ruined my own sister with my own hands. The man put sedatives in the drink, so I killed him. No one is allowed to hurt you. Not even me. Cheng, I'm sorry. I had only just found you again, and already I have to say goodbye. In the next life I will still be your sister. And this time I won't lose you." Holding my doll, I cried until I could hardly breathe. I understood then that there was no longer anyone in the world named Nakahara Yue. There had only been a woman who loved her little sister too much and recognized her too late. And I never even got the chance to call her Sister.

Morikawa Toya will go on believing that I left with Kamiya Raku, just like the ending of some fairy tale, and that somewhere in Scotland I am living happily ever after. But he will never know that on the way to the airport, I opened the car door and jumped out. Raku held my injured body and cried like a child. "Sakakibara Cheng, how can you do this? How can you not give me even one chance?" I smiled at him through pain. "If you love me, then leave. Don't look for me again. Never remember me again." Then I lost consciousness. When I woke in the hospital, Raku was beside me. I turned my face away and closed my eyes. He said brokenly, "Don't do this. When your leg heals, I'll go, just like you said. I'll stop looking for you. Stop thinking of you. But this one last time, let me take care of you." Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes. Winter came quickly. Snow covered the whole world overnight. Touching the heavy cast on my leg, I told him one day, "I'm leaving." He was peeling an apple then, and the peel broke in his hand. "To find him?" he asked. I did not answer. He gave a bitter smile. "I'm leaving too. Back to Scotland. I won't come back again." Then he looked into my eyes and said, "You have to live well." I nodded.

I never told anyone that although the sedatives had long since left my body, the damage they had done could not be undone. My heart was slowly failing. One day it would simply stop. I rented a small room in the middle of the city because I thought that when death finally came, I wanted the last thing I heard to be traffic horns and human noise. That way, Morikawa Toya, I could tell myself that you had never truly left me. That you were standing somewhere out there among the crowds, watching me from afar, warming my little lonely heart from the beginning to the end.