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Crow doesn't come around here much any more. Wild creatures are like that. But he's here today, swoops over the school and lands on one of the railings, the one smeared with ashes from illicit cigarettes.
They're all gathered outside, all of them, teachers and parents. Icy winds have come from the north to threaten the blossoming cherry trees, the brave early blooms are punished for their eagerness to shower the world. Under the frost, it still feels like spring, all of the new life beneath the concrete is preparing itself for sunny days.
At most graduations, teachers and parents and siblings form a line leading from the front doors of the school building to the gate separating the school from the outside world. It's different at these expensive schools. Students are spared the nerve-destroying exams, instead, the teachers and well-wishers gently pass them from the junior high to the high school. The high school has been decorated to welcome them. They shuffle across the school yard, a few duck behind the vans for tearful goodbyes, and even though they will be seeing each other in two weeks when the new semester begins, they take pictures of themselves leaving the old school building and take more pictures of themselves entering the new one.
It's easy to find the boy in the crowd. He's bigger than the rest, taller and broader, with eyes that have seen too much for someone his age. He doesn't have any parents to greet him, and the teachers who shake his hand gruffly make a show of not favouring him over the other students. Some of them were friends with his father, proud because an artist of his stature had chosen their school for his son, and the tragedy, the tabloids, the police questioning students, they want to pretend it happened somewhere else, not to one of their own. Crow approves of this. The boy doesn't need to satisfy their curiosity.
The boy shoves his hands in his pockets and breaks away from the Grade 9 to Grade 10 migration. There's someone waiting for him just outside the gate, in the real world. Crow follows them at a safe distance. He probably won't be needed, but you never know. The boy has a history of doing unnecessary things. The boy and his friend cross over one street, under another, side by side they pass through the crowds in the shopping district until they come to a bright red awning. It's nothing special, a family restaurant with cheap spaghetti and even cheaper wine, but it's perfect for private conversations. Mothers are too busy fussing over their children and the children are too busy throwing food on the ground to do any eavesdropping.
"Congratulations." Oshima's smile is warm. It's been ten months since Kafka left the library. He looks the same, of course, why would he change? Changes in adults are slower than in a fifteen year old.
Oshima studies the lurid posters of hamburg steak and juicy chicken, orders a pot-au-feu. "I have a present for you," he says. "I was going to wait until your birthday, but today seemed a good a day as any." He took a small box out of his pocket.
I want to be honest with him, but I don't know where to start. "I've decided to go to high school," I say.
"I'm glad."
"When I finish, I do want to come back to the library. You'll probably have a real assistant by then..." I start to mumble.
"For you, the library might be the kind of place you can only visit once."
"Don't say that."
"Open your present." The box contains a key. It's not an antique or gold or anything, just an ordinary key like the one to my apartment. "The cabin will always be there for you. Don't forget, my brother promised to teach you to surf."
I nod and want to say thank you, but nothing comes out.
Oshima pays for the meal. "When two men date, the older partner pays," he teases and I feel myself blush. Later, I try to imagine what could happen between us if Oshima were my partner. I come up with some ideas, but it feels wrong to masturbate while thinking about him, like I would want to tell him about it first. I fall asleep thinking of how our conversation would go. Oshima always has great advice. Tell me how to think about you, I want to ask.
Tell me how to think about you.
I hang the key on a cord and wear it around my neck. Its presence reassures me. It tells me that any time I want, I can walk back to Shikoku. Sometimes, I go to the school roof and think about learning to surf. The water would hold me like a lover, maybe, or beat me into the sand. Oshima's brother was probably the kind of guy who would be a patient teacher.
"If you're going to be here, be here," Crow says a little disdainfully.
Most days school is easy. I spend more time running on the track than in class. My birthday passes. Was I the world's toughest teenager? Sometimes, I think I was. I don't need to be the world's toughest sixteen-year-old. It's enough to run a little faster every day, see the world blur a tiny bit more every time I complete a circle.
There's no such thing as an incomplete circle.
Some days it isn't so easy. I run until I can't breathe, then I fall asleep on the school roof or in the equipment shed and dream about the end of the world. At least, if I were to tell anyone, they would say it was a dream. I once lived in a village caught out of time, so I know sometimes the world just stops.
I fall asleep. I wake up. I fall asleep and wake up to an empty school. Notebooks are open on the desks, pens carefully placed in their spines. Equations are scrawled across whiteboards, waiting for the lecturer to return. I guess if I cared about practical jokes, I could do a lot when the world is like this. I could switch books, maybe even steal the girls' PE uniforms and sell them to old guys with strange hobbies. But I don't do any of that. I walk through the empty school, through the courtyard, through the gate, into the empty city. Tokyo, caught between heartbeats. At the end of the street, there's a small rise where it goes over an old river. The river is free now, it rushes before me, but I'm not ready to cross over into the green fields on the other side. I can't cross the river, not yet. I walk back, up the stairs, and wait until the noise of the city snaps back into existence.
"What did you expect?" asks Crow.
The days pass. I know I'm not the only one who goes to other places, but it's not the kind of question you can ask a classmate. "Hey, do you ever fall asleep at school and wake up with everyone gone?" It's not crazy, but talking makes it sound wrong.
I've given up looking for my sister. I know the only place I'll see her is in the parts of my face I inherited from my mother. The new student teacher is the first girl in a long time I've looked at and thought, oh, could it be her? It's not just she's the right age, there's something quiet and focused about her that reminds me of Miss Saeki, a familiar absence. She's only fully present when she stands at the whiteboard, pen squeaking across rows of equations. When she turns to us and asks any questions, she almost looks beautiful.
When I tell Sakura about the student teacher, she teases me about my crush and says if I'm going to stay in school, I might as well be a teacher's pet.
"You need an older woman to keep you steady," she says. "Not me, of course. Some other older woman."
Sakura sits on my bed, slim legs stretched in front of her, skirt carefully tucked around her bare knees. She looks more like a real adult now. It's more than a cosmetic change, the concealer covering her freckles and a darker shade of hair dye. I want to push back the strands of hair framing her face to see if her ears still have their odd, slightly pointy shape. In spite of everything, it's too embarrassing to imagine touching her now.
"Older woman, huh?" I imagine what she would think of me if I told her about Miss Saeki. About Oshima. Sakura picks up the bee-shaped paperweight Crow rescued from my father's house on the day it was sold.
It's his seventeenth birthday. "Seventeen isn't an important birthday." Crow says. It should be a day like any other.
It's today, the day I cross the river. The only sound in this place is water rushing over rocks and I wonder how long it's been since anyone in my world has heard it. Once I'm over the river, the road narrows to a path, barely visible in the grass. There's probably a haiku like that in the library, something about summer grasses. I'll have to ask Oshima about the meaning later. The key he gave me feels heavy. I pull the cord off my neck and it falls to the ground with a thud. It still looks the same, a modern key for a modern lock. I pick it up and put it back around my neck. It definitely feels different.
I break into an easy jog, heading for the dark cluster of trees in the distance. Running here feels different, free, like it's the way people were supposed to run. The ground is a little harder than the artificial track at the school, but it feels right. There are some buildings to my left, west, maybe, but I don't go over there. They're not on the path, and I think they when I get to them, they may not be buildings at all, they may be other empty places.
I slow down when I reach the forest. It's cool and dark, the watery sunlight is obscured by the very tall trees. The path becomes stone. I can see shapes, caves carved into the towering rocks, strange figures lurk in the darkness. They are statues hidden in the shrines, their faces worn away by wind and rain and time until the last of their humanity is gone.
"You've been following me," I say.
The boy named Crow nods. "I'm not supposed to let you open the door," he says.
I run past him, months of training giving me a burst of speed. I may not be the toughest, but here I am the fastest.
If Crow had transformed--but even transformed, he can't defeat me. I throw the key as far as I can, at the door, trusting it to find the lock. The door welcomes it, strange characters blur and reform.
The door opens.
The darkness beyond the door fragments. Shadows, hundreds, thousands, emerge into the watery forest light. They're wispy, uncertain, they sluggishly move out of the cave.
"What's done is done," Crow says. "You might as well take home the ones you know." I can't tell if he's pleased or angry. I see a shadow that looks familiar, like she might spend a lot of time blankly gazing outside the windows of the school. The man who lives under me, the elderly art teacher who sleeps in the teacher's room. I'm surprised to see so many shadows are familiar. Every day we talk to people, we have the usual conversations, never knowing part of them is missing.
"You and you and you, come with me," I say. They detach themselves from the mass of shadows and follow me as I walk back over the grassy plain. A few more shadows follow them, and a few more. I lead a parade of shadows back into the city.
I don't know if anything really changes. The student teacher finishes her training before I can ask if she feels it, if she notices how dark her shadow had become, how it obscures her equations. The art teacher starts painting again, but he isn't any happier and his paintings aren't good.
Oshima sends me another key. Says he'd had a dream and next time I need to be careful. He comes to Tokyo on my eighteenth birthday and gives me a book by Mori Ogai. We sit in the family restaurant, eating strawberry parfaits and watching the shadows find their owners.
Oshima's shadow is a little shy around him, but eventually the fragment re-attaches itself. "I don't know if this is a good thing." Oshima examines his complete shadow critically. "Sometimes there's a reason we lose part of our shadows."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. This had to happen, and now is a good a time as any. We want to be complete, even if it's frightening."
"I'm leaving Tokyo after graduation," I say. "I haven't seen much of Japan or anything of the world and I think it's important. There's still a lot I don't understand."
Oshima's serious expression doesn't change. He never has a hair out of place or a wrinkle in his shirt.
"I like you," I say. "I don't know what it means, but I like you."
Oshima stares at me intently, then his face breaks into a smile. "That's something you're supposed to say when you come back," he says. "Journeys end in lovers' meetings."
We kiss at the train station. We stand behind the waiting room, the woman selling newspapers pointedly ignores us and we ignore the world. Journeys start and journeys end: a circle.