Neither Maki nor Rei has a special someone either, so the three of us buddied up and ate some biscuits together. We probably seemed like the three class dogs.
‘That actress is gorgeous, huh? I’d love to be with someone like that!’ The area around Rei’s eyes had gone a pale peach colour. What’s got you so hot and bothered, I thought to myself.
‘What would you do if you were?’ asked Maki.
‘I’d whip up a nice lunch every day for her to take to work.’
‘Pssh, that’s ridiculous. Nothing good can come of having a crush on someone like that. She’d definitely cheat on you. She probably has little pillow queens all over town.’
You can use that kind of vulgar slang only among friends. There were rumours that Maki’s a top, not that she’s popular at all. One time she showed me one of her love letters, but everything she’d written was so crude that I rewrote it for her. She ended up sending the one she’d come up with on her own, though, which is maybe why she got her heart broken yet again. The younger girl she was hot for ran off with some good-for-nothing who was a lot older.
Maki was determined to show her by ‘becoming a hoodlum’, but other than taking up smoking (she gives me cigarettes occasionally, so I’m not complaining), she’s just as unpopular as ever.
Cigarettes are a real luxury item, and almost nowhere sells them. They have a terribly acrid taste and the packages look filthy, but you’d be lucky to get a pack for two kilos of rice.
‘Fuck actresses. They’re the enemy.’ Maki was getting herself worked up.
Graduation was coming up soon, so everyone had been out of sorts lately. September meant the end of school.
The kids from the Cinema Studies Club had gone to a secret screening recently, and it turned into a big thing. The newspaper even carried the story, and they all ended up getting expelled.
They’d watched an old movie from before the revision of the penal code. It was called American Graffiti or something, and not only does it feature lots of men, it doesn’t depict them the way the authorities think a movie should. The world was a really terrible place before it got to be like it is now, but apparently they don’t want anybody seeing this movie because it presents that time in an attractive light. Though it wasn’t the students themselves who’d taken it from the Cultural Centre, of course.
Men sometimes still appear in movies but only as adults. And even though they don’t show anything below the neck, no one under the age of eighteen is allowed to see them.
By the time I had finished leisurely smoking the precious cigarette, the world outside my window had begun making its way toward dawn.
I carried the chair over to the window and sat looking out.
If he hadn’t been a hallucination, there was always the chance that the boy might pass this way again. I waited with my elbows propped on the windowsill, but he never showed. Did he know I’d seen him? He might be on the run from the Occupancy Zone, in which case, did I need to warn him? It was one thing for me to spot him, but if anyone else did they’d report it to the police, no question.
With one eye still focused on the road outside, I returned to my desk.
‘What’s your name? Why are you here? I won’t tell anyone (I promise), so please answer. I want to be friends.’
I wrote this on a scrap of paper torn from my notebook and folded it up long and thin, then wrapped it around the neck of a ceramic rabbit and tied a ribbon over it to hold it in place. I’d bought the ribbon the previous Sunday when my sister and I went to the high street. It was dark blue, with gold lamé. It felt a little wasteful since I’d never even worn it once, but oh well.
Returning to the window with the figure of the rabbit in my hands, I continued my vigil. What if he couldn’t read? Going by what my sister had said, it didn’t sound like there were schools or anything in the GETO.
Eventually a figure emerged from the trees – the same person as yesterday. He didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry, but he’d have been trying not to draw attention to himself, so who knows.
I dropped the rabbit out the window so it landed right at his feet, and he looked up. I smiled to put him at ease, and then grabbed a light cotton handkerchief that was sitting nearby and dropped it down as well.
I had embroidered the handkerchief myself, and it had taken three whole days. My sister hates handicrafts, so I’d gotten Grandma to teach me.
The boy (if that’s what he was) seemed startled at first and stared suspiciously up at my grinning face. His apparent fearlessness thrilled me.
He picked up the rabbit and gave me a questioning look. I nodded, and then moved away from the window so as not to scare him. Not that he seemed in the least bit frightened.
I lay on my bed and folded my arms under my head. I just spaced out for a while, not thinking about anything in particular, during which time a clear impression of the person passing below the window took hold in my mind.
I went downstairs and looked for something to eat, but there was nothing in the cabinets other than some bread and tinned goods. Not many households have refrigerators. Grandma says that in her day they were everywhere.
Has the world taken a step backward? Whenever I ask that question, my sister gets angry. ‘Looking at the world through the lens of progress is how the rivers and oceans ended up polluted,’ she says. But that’s not what I mean. Though one time she also said, ‘Time passes, the planet has its many histories, and things decline. That’s all there is to it.’
They say if you go to London or New York nowadays, it’s just the same as here. Though it’s incredibly difficult to leave the country in the first place. If you ever managed it, you’d be a celebrity anywhere you went. You’d be in all the newspapers (which are only distributed to schools and workplaces and other public facilities), and you’d probably even be on the radio. There are only two radio stations, and they broadcast from seven to ten in the morning and five till eight at night. It’s my dream to see other countries, but it’ll probably never come true.
I rested my elbows on the kitchen table and munched on a piece of bread that tasted like boiled roots. I’d have loved to eat something that actually tasted good. But our household gets by on my sister’s income alone. Since there’s a criminal in our family, we aren’t eligible for public assistance. Grandma does a little piecework on the side, but that barely brings in anything. We get by thanks to the free meals they give out at school and work. I spread some margarine on the bread. The hands of the clock pointed to 5:17. The person had passed under my window just after four.
Bread in hand, I put on my sandals and went outside. I inspected the area under my window – the ceramic rabbit and handkerchief were both gone. He’d accepted my gifts. How disappointed I would’ve been if they were still there!
I finished the bread where I stood, in the flood of morning sunlight.
‘Yūko, you sleepwalking or something? What are you doing with your bookbag? There’s no class today,’ Maki reminded me. ‘You’ve been kind of weird lately. Did you find a special someone?’
Rei was chewing on her pencil.
‘Umm, well… something like that,’ I replied vaguely. It’d been two weeks. I’d been waking up super early every day and keeping watch from my window at dawn. He comes by about once every three days. We still haven’t spoken. We just wave to each other.
‘Who is it?’ Maki raised her eyebrows.
‘It’s a s-s-secret.’ I pulled a suggestive expression. I tend to only play things up like that when there’s nothing actually going on, and so they both lost interest immediately.
‘Rei’s been writing letters to that actress every single day, sending her flowers even. What a moron, right?’ Maki said.