Book Girl and the Famished Spirit

He would kill her.

His body trembled with a tempest of madness as he made the decision.

Yes. Kill her. Do it.

So that time would never flow back on its original path. So that she would be forever bound in his world.

Embrace her corpse, drink her blood, devour her flesh, lay your head on her bones, and rest in the same casket. Her eyes, her nose, her lips, her skin, her flesh, her blood, her bones—all of it belonged to him.

As each of his fingers bit into her throat—white as snow and cold as an icicle—he whispered hoarsely.

“Good-bye, Kayano, my betrayer.”

This is a perfect misanthrope’s heaven.

So said a certain gentleman who secluded himself in the countryside. During the second half of my third year in middle school, I secluded myself in my bedroom.

I kept the curtains shut through the day and drew the covers over my head, praying that the sun wouldn’t rise, that tomorrow would never come, while I dug my nails into the sheets and buried my face in the pillow, blubbering.

There were plenty of middle school boys in Japan, so why had this happened to
me
?

What had
I
done?

I wasn’t actually a misanthrope. It was just that the first novel I ever wrote happened to be chosen for a new author’s prize; I happened to be the youngest winner ever; and I happened to choose Miu Inoue as my pen name, which made me sound like a girl.

But when my book was published, it had to go and become a best seller, and there had to be a big stir about “the brilliant, mysterious young girl” who wrote it… and in exchange, I lost something important to me.

I would never again be able to see the special girl I had liked
ever since I was little, but that didn’t stop people from applauding the fourteen-year-old girl genius or conjecturing about who Miu really was, and the publishers hounded me for my next book almost every single day.

Why did I have to keep writing novels when something so awful had happened to Miu?

Just leave me alone. I’m not a brilliant author, and I’m not a stuck-up girl from a good family who could actually pull off the whole white parasol look. I’m never going to write a novel again!

Cold sweat coated my body. The tips of my fingers ached. My chest tightened as if it were being twisted in a vice. I couldn’t breathe. I closed the door to my room, squeezed my eyes shut tight, covered my ears, blocked out all information, and tried to pretend that
none of it had happened.

Everything happening outside my door was a dream. Only this side of the door was real, and the other side was nothing but lies.
Please, don’t let anyone open the door. Don’t come in here. If the door opens, that world of lies will become reality. It will crash over me like a tsunami and swallow me up and I’ll drown.

I bit down on my blanket, damp and smelling of sweat, until my gums bled, and with all of my heart, I wished I could go back in time and do it all over again.

Just a few months, that’s all. If I could just go back…

I would never write that novel. I would never apply to the new author competition.

I could just be an ordinary middle school student at Miu’s side, watching her smile, listening to her stories like rays of sunlight in a forest, intoxicated by the vibrant abundance of words she wrote, and my heart would be satisfied with that, not afraid of the world or the people in it, living my life in peace and happiness.

I want to go back.

I want to do it over.

Please, God. Please put me back the way I was before I wrote that novel.

But no matter how earnestly the middle school boy prayed in his dark bedroom, of course a convenient request like that would never be granted.

At the end of a long, long winter, I hobbled out of bed, took the exams, and entered high school.

And in the summer of my second year of high school—

I’m writing treats for the “book girl” in the book club with only two members.

With slender fingers, Tohko tore a corner off the page and placed it in her mouth, then gave a quick smile.

“Yummm.”

Then she took another bite, and then another…

With great care, she tore off a bit of the lined paper, densely covered in the writing of a mechanical pencil, and brought it to her lips. She chewed it with soft, crinkling noises and swallowed neatly.

“That was really brisk… and sweet,” she murmured rapturously, her small face lolling forward. But then her mouth pulled into a grimace, and confusion filled her round, black eyes as her face slowly tensed. Sweat beaded up on her forehead, and the very moment the last scrap had fearfully passed her lips, Tohko leaped up from her metal folding chair.

“TOO HOOOOOT!!”

Her long, thin braids bounced in the air like black cats’ tails, fat tears rolled from her eyes, and she clung to the back of the chair as she reproachfully exclaimed, “Th-that was
so spicy.
My tongue feels like it’s being torn out. My eyeballs are going to shoot flames. My nose is going to drip all over my face. That story had way too much spice in it, Konoha!”

I closed my notebook and put my pencil away while I serenely replied, “Maybe your prompts didn’t go together so well. I get an ‘apple orchard’ and ‘flower swing,’ but then a ‘fully automatic washing machine’? That definitely clashes.”

Tohko preferred improv stories, which are stories constructed from three prompts, for her snacks.

Whenever I went to the club room after school, Tohko would already be waiting for me with a silver stopwatch in hand.

“Okay, Konoha, today’s topics are ‘a Crowsmas party,’ ‘Tokyo Dome,’ and ‘a Virgo boy.’ Make it
super
sugary, okay? You have exactly fifty minutes. And go!”

Her face beaming, not a speck of worry to be seen, she punched the stopwatch.

Afterward, Tohko would tear the story I had written into little pieces and bring them to her lips. Then she began correcting everything, chewing and gobbling the whole time.

“
Nom-nom
… The middle seems a little flavorless. Maybe you should try using shorter sentences and see if the tempo picks up. Oh! The last scene is so squishy and delicious—it tastes like mango pudding.”

This girl is one grade ahead of me, a third-year goblin who eats stories.

She’ll crunch her way through the written word with relish, whether it’s handwritten or printed in a book, just like you and I eat bread or drink water. Then she’ll happily unleash her vast knowledge about what she’s eaten.

Though, if I called her a “goblin,” she would probably pout and argue. “Don’t call me a goblin! I’m just an average book girl, who loves all the books of the world so intensely that she devours them.”

Her long, thin braids that trail to her waist; her clear, intelligent black eyes; her ivory skin; her slender, curveless figure—judging
strictly by surface features, Tohko could have been a book girl from an older, better age: a refined young lady perfectly complemented by violets.

But it just so happened that on the inside, she was a troublesome club president—a talkative glutton, ravenously inquisitive, and eager to stick her nose into everything.

“
Snff
… my tongue is still tingling. I was expecting a bittersweet love story that would make my heart ache. But you wrote a story where a boy gets into an automated washing machine and flies to this apple orchard at the ends of the earth, and then every time he swings on the flower swing, apples with human faces on them start screaming and drop to the ground.

“Blech! I gobbled it up thinking it would taste like apple pie and tart cream, but instead of apples, it was filled with bright red Szechuan noodles, and instead of cinnamon sprinkled on top, it tasted like it was covered with chili powderrrr!”

The impact of the decapitated-head apples had been pretty strong apparently since her nose was still running and she was crying.

“All I did was write what you told me to. Don’t complain to me.”

“You’re so coldhearted, Konoha! You might look like Little Lord Fauntleroy, but inside you’re Miss Minchin from
A Little Princess
!”

“What kind of comparison is that? I don’t have blond hair or big eyes, and I don’t wear frilly shirts like that, either.”

Tohko sighed. “Maybe I’ll have some Aiken short stories to get rid of that awful taste. ‘A Necklace of Raindrops’ would be good or ‘There’s Some Sky in This Pie’ or maybe ‘The Three Travelers’! That would be so, so, sooo yummy!”

She tucked her legs under her on the folding chair and rocked it back and forth, hugging the backrest.
What are you,
I thought,
some preschooler throwing a tantrum in a store because you want a toy?

Aghast, I offered, “ ‘The Three Travelers’ was in my literature book. That’s the one about the three attendants at a train station in the desert who take a break, and each one goes on a journey, right?”

That made Tohko’s face light up. She started talking animatedly.

“That’s right. Joan Aiken was a British children’s author who was born in 1924. Her series
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
is such a roller coaster and as charming and sharp as the ginger cookies the mother in the story bakes for the children. I recommend it, but her short stories are juicy and delicious, too! ‘The Three Travelers’ is like fresh fruit. Oranges that burst with golden juice, refreshing citron, muscats like jewels. It’s like popping them against your tongue as the cool fruit juice spills into your mouth!”

Her long eyelashes drooped as her eyes closed, and she craned her neck back, murmuring in ecstasy. When she talked about food, Tohko sounded truly happy.

Our club room was located in the western corner of the school’s third floor. It had once been a storage room, and mounds of old books were stacked along the walls. In what small space remained stood an old oak table with a pocked surface.

Sunlight poured in from the west at sunset. I would sit at the wobbly table in the dusty room, which was dyed the rich color of honey, and fill sheets of paper with my mechanical pencil.

Meanwhile, Tohko propped her feet up on her folding chair, her knees pulled up to her chest—exhibiting little concern for manners—and turned the pages of a book with a look of pure ecstasy on her face. She would steal a glance in my direction from time to time to check on the progress of her snack, then grin happily and go back to reading.

It was just the two of us in the book club, and I had been writing Tohko’s snacks for more than a year.

Tohko sighed. “Now I just want to eat Aiken even worse. Oh, I know!”

Tohko’s eyes snapped open, emerging from the fantasy she’d been constructing, and she leaned forward with a grin.

“Maybe there’s a syrupy letter waiting for us in the mailbox in the schoolyard.”

She was talking about the mailbox she had set up without permission, which read “We will grant you your love. Interested parties, please send us a letter. By, the Book Club.” It had been nothing but trouble.

Tohko couldn’t control herself when it came to her favorite food—handwritten, one-of-a-kind stories, preferably sugary love stories. In order to get a taste, she offered to grant the love of whoever came to her for help and required a report detailing their pure feelings as compensation. She was the kind of person for whom no effort was too great in the pursuit of good food.

I just wished she would stop getting me involved in everything, too.

“I’m not ghostwriting any more love letters, got that?” My warning was firm, but she wasn’t paying any attention.

“Sure thing.”

She slid out of the folding chair giving her noncommittal reply, and went off to check the mailbox with a cheerful stride.

Geez…

Left alone in the room, I let out a sigh.

The wind blew in through an open window, fluttering the paper on top of the oak table.

Summer had been cooler this year than last and much easier to get through. I was grateful for that since the club room had no air-conditioning. Hopefully Tohko wouldn’t stick her nose into any other messes, drag me along, and make it a summer of sweat and toil.

I gazed at the white clouds floating by beyond the curtains, billowing and swelling with the wind, until Tohko returned, her shoulders thrown back.

“This is so mean! Read this, Konoha!” she exploded, scattering the papers in her hand across the tea-colored table.

Tohko had returned bearing small strips of paper ripped from a college-ruled notebook. They were all different shapes and the edges were rough. Lines of penciled writing were scribbled across them.

I looked at the wobbly letters skipping across the roughly torn bits of paper, and my eyes widened. I gasped.

There were some pieces of paper with only strings of numbers on them.

“I wonder what these numbers mean,” Tohko said with a serious look, scrunching up her face. “Four symbolizes death, so obviously ‘4-5’ means 4 (death), 5 (finds you). Someone has issued us a challenge.”

I was left momentarily agape at her reasoning process. Then I recovered.

“Hold on. Don’t you think you’re making some leaps there? Couldn’t it just be a joke instead of something all overblown like a challenge? And stop saying ‘us.’ ”

“What are you saying, Konoha? Even if it is just a joke, we can’t
overlook the villains who would dump something this unappetizing—I mean, this cowardly and uninspired—into my precious snack box—er, the book club’s sacred mailbox! This is a battle for the continued existence of the book club. Are you going to put up with being picked on just because there’s only two of us? We have to teach them that the book club is poor in numbers but rich in spirit!”

“When you say battle… are you planning on fighting them?”

“Yes, I am. And if it comes to that, I’ll beat the drums of war and trumpet their defeat.”

Uh-oh. She was getting carried away again, like always. I knew the fantasy was gaining steam in Tohko’s mind now. When they get like this, book girls are beyond help.

“My midterms are coming up soon, so I’ll just head home.”

I quickly gathered up my things and started to leave, but Tohko clamped both hands around my arm like a vice.

“No way. We’re staking out the school yard from now on. This is a direct order from your president, Konoha.”

Tohko’s chest pressed against my arm. She was so flat it was sad, and that made me wonder if she was really in her final year of high school. It was in that moment that she won my pity, and I stopped myself from shaking off her grip. That was the site of my defeat.

I ended up spending the precious few days left before the midterms with Tohko in the school yard.

And then…

“Hey! They put another one in there!”

It was seven in the morning. The school yard was soaked from the previous night’s rain.

Peeking out beside an old tree in one corner, half-buried in the grass, was the goblin mailbox—strike that, the love advice mailbox.

Tohko groaned. “Urgggh. We’re here an hour early and everything. And we stayed all the way to six o’clock yesterday.”

“Maybe they’re dropping them off at night.”

I thought the creepy note would be a onetime thing, but surprisingly they came every day after that.

They said more or less the same thing:
hate you, help, a ghost.
Words like that appeared frequently. And the strings of incomprehensible numbers…

“These numbers show up a lot: 25, 28, 20, 5, 4, 27, 10, 28, 4, 21, 21, 20, 28, 24, 21, 17, 12, 21, 4. I wonder what they mean?”

Tohko furrowed her brow intently and soberly replied, “This one means 25 (to find you), 28 (to eat you), 20 (I went), 5 (found you), 4 (for), 27 (to send you), 10 (then), 28 (to eat you), 4 (force), 21 (to let me win), 21 (again), 20 (plenty), 28 (I’ll eat you), 24 (and then force you), 21 (to let me win), 17 (won’t send you), 12 (not both of you), 21 (to let me win), 4 (forever). See?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You need to work on your reading comprehension a bit more, Konoha. In essence, it’s saying, ‘I’m going to send you these notes and then find you and eat you so I can win forever!’ ”

“Now I get it even less. You sure you’re reading it right?”

“What’s this? You doubt your president? I’m a book girl! I’ve read every word of Christie and Queen and Jiro Akutagawa.”

I wasn’t sure that Jiro Akutagawa was so serious… But no, I didn’t care.

“Then hurry up and deduce who committed the crime. Midterms are next week, you know. I want to go home and study.”

“Konoha, there are more important things to learn while you’re still in school than mathematical formulas and chemical symbols.”

“That’s sophistry.”

The sight of us hunkered down in the school yard at the crack
of dawn, our heads bent together in whispered discussion, was utterly absurd and stupid.