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“Anna, Anna! I found the rest of Marnie’s diary!” Sayaka’s shrill voice rings across the marshy meadow. She grins from her bicycle, waving the tattered book fast enough to generate wind. The afternoon sunlight beams behind her and illuminates her pigtails and round red glasses.
“One second, I’ll be right there,” I call back. I drop the last tomato of our harvest into the carved wooden basket and take off toward the water. “I’ll see you later, Auntie! Sayaka and I are just going to take a bike ride together!”
Auntie Setsu waves me away without looking up from where she’s been pruning the vegetables. “Yes yes, you two have fun! Oh, and please bring me back some chips from the convenience store later, would you?” She has to raise her voice to tell me that last part, as I’m already hopping onto the back of Sayaka’s bike.
“Yes, I will! Now let’s go,” I breathlessly tell my friend. She obediently sets off toward the marsh dock, where we like to meet and discuss our findings with my quiet friend Toichi hanging around.
The bicycle wheels crunch against the gravel as my legs brush against the long grass of the shortcut trail. I can barely contain my excitement at solving the mystery of Marnie—her past, her thoughts about this boy Kazuhiko, and that name she kept crossing out in her previous entries, Hisako. “I didn’t want to read any of it without you,” Sayaka pants, “but I couldn’t help and skim through some of it. This diary barely has any entries, but I kept seeing Hisako over and over. Marnie would write it then scribble out her name.”
Who is Hisako?? I wondered, not for the first time. “Maybe they were friends and had a fight? Maybe Kazuhiko replaced—”
“Hold on, you have to see this!” Sayaka rolled to a stop, flipping open the diary to a well-worn page. She thrust it in my face and pointed.
“June 8 - Today my best friends Toichi, Hisako, and I went mushrooming in the woods! I wish I could have taken a picture of the moment Toichi tripped over a tree root and dropped all of our maitake. Hisako and I doubled over laughing at his face. I swear, when Hisako and I were reaching for sakurasou flowers to decorate our hair, we brushed hands for a split second. I can’t explain the butterflies in my stomach. Well, it was probably just some unripe mushroom I ate. We’re just friends. Of course we’re just friends, and nothing else.” The entry abruptly ends there with a stray pencil streak, as if Marnie had been interrupted from her thoughts. I shudder, thinking of the cruel twin maids or her iron-fisted Nan whom I had seen in my visits to the mansion.
Sayaka shows me the rest of the pages. There’s nothing left. “Why would she just stop writing the diary? Anna, we have to go ask Toichi! He might be at the dock still!”
“Alright, what are you waiting for?” I give the bike a push. We pedal toward the marsh.
There he is. Reliable as ever, Toichi sits in his boat with a fishing rod in hand. “Mr. Toichi! Can we speak with you for a bit? It’s really important!” I yell before I remember my manners enough to bow in greeting.
Mr. Toichi nods, barely startled. He ever so slightly gestures for us to climb into his boat. The fisherman clears his throat and asks, with his voice hoarse from disuse, “What’s that in your hand?” His eyes widen when we show him. “‘Marnie’s Diary’--you girls know who she is?”
“Well, that’s exactly the question we came here to ask you. Can you please tell us her story? We’ve been so curious ever since Sayaka found it in the mansion’s desk. Who is Hisako—”
“And who is Kazuhiko?” Sayaka cuts in. She’s been enamored with him since we found Marnie’s sketch of him on one page. She thinks he’s handsome, but I’m more preoccupied with the author of the diary herself.
Toichi turns away, gazing out into the setting sun. “It’s not often I find a reason to speak, you know. This is a sad story…” he warns us.
“That’s okay, we really want to hear it, Mr. Toichi,” I say in a rush. Before I think better of it, I tell them, “It sounds insane, but I’ve also been seeing Marnie in my dreams. Once I even danced with her at a party. We had a picnic on the shore. And I took her to the haunted silo on the hill.” I take a deep breath. “You probably think I’m going crazy.”
Toichi’s face remains impassive. “No, not at all. I think you’ll understand when I’m done with the story.” He sets down his fishing rod and clasps his hands together. “Ages ago, long before you were born, I knew two girls named Hisako and Marnie…”
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We were an inseparable trio. Back in those times, we stuck out like a sore thumb—a poor fisherman’s boy, a daydreaming artistic girl, and a foreigner’s wealthy daughter. But we were young and couldn’t care less. Hisako, Marnie, and I would spend our days foraging in the forest or rowing through the marsh. Sometimes, Marnie even invited us to her parents’ glamorous parties, but we’d always end up waltzing and talking into the late hours outside. I tended to avoid crowds like that and preferred the company of my two friends.
One night, Marnie asked Hisako to be the flower girl at the gala. Hisako, being just as quiet as me, was hesitant but would never say no to Marnie. I said we three were inseparable, but the two girls were like twin flames—they never left each other’s side. I caught them doing slow dances together, Marnie humming a tune to Hisako and catching her when she stumbled. They made quite a pair. Hisako would always wear her red shawl and wide hat, while Marnie found a new dress every day.
I wasn’t there that night when Hisako brought Marnie to the silo to face her fears of the ghosts there, but I heard all about it afterward. It was a howling cold evening, one of those storms where the rain is piercing and the thunder booms. Marnie decided to go ahead, but she was too terrified to climb back down the ladder when the storm picked up. Hisako draped her in her coat and guided her back out through the rain, and they showed up at my house shivering. You see, they were everything to each other.
You girls say that Kazuhiko appears in the diary? The fact is, I never even knew much about him. Marnie met him, an heir to an oil business, at a party. When I saw them together, Marnie would keep glancing over at Hisako as if in apology. The other girl would sit with me, arms crossed and checking the time until Marnie would conclude her pleasantries and come entertain us again.
It is my belief that they loved each other deeply. More than friends, even. But two girls never fell in love at our age. I remember they embraced one last time before Hisako moved away to take care of her grandmother in Sapporo, and Marnie grew up to marry Kazuhiko. We wrote each other often, but truth be told, I could never tell if either of them were truly content. Half of their letters to me were asking about the other.
About ten years ago, Hisako sent me her last postcard. She had been raising her granddaughter for three years after her parents died in a car accident. The little girl’s name was Marianna…Hisako told me, "I’ve been singing those old tunes to her before she sleeps. I tell her all about you and Marnie, the adventures we would have together. I try to describe Marnie’s blond curls, her shimmery pink gowns, and how she readily offered smiles to everyone in the village. I miss you both, dear Toichi." Hisako passed away from illness months after, and Marianna was sent to foster care. I never did find out where she went, but she must be a young teenager by now—just like you two. Marnie died not soon after, and I’m the only one left. Now the village knows me as the mute old man who sits in his boat and watches the sunset. That’s the way it’s been until I met you.
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Toichi pauses his story here, fixing his eyes on me as if he wants me to read between the lines. His words had been stirring up something familiar in me. Hazy memories of warm blankets, a soothing voice guiding me to sleep—recollections so far away, I had considered them dreams from my time in the orphanage. Marianna, Anna, those names are not too different.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you, Anna? About ten years ago, I received an urgent message along with Hisako’s last postcard. It said, ‘I don’t know where the authorities will place her after my death, but if a girl who looks like Marianna ever comes by for a visit, please watch over her. Show her the marsh mansion, where my first love lived. And thank you, Toichi.’”
My head spins. I don’t realize I’ve been crying until Sayaka silently offers me a handkerchief, her face sympathetic. “Are you saying—Hisako is my grandmother? And that means…Marnie was her first love…”
“That’s exactly right, Anna.” For the first time since I’ve met him, Toichi’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Your grandmother hoped that you would come back to the very place and person she held onto so dearly, for decades. It seems that Marnie’s love for Hisako has stretched across generations, and it just so happened to reach you.”
The End