.I rechecked the flyer that was clipped in the book. Everything fits. If this is a message that Mafuyu left for me, and if that magic still exists......
I stuffed the book back into my pocket and resumed walking. The soil felt hard beneath my feet. The air was moist, and the roars of the ocean, combined with the rustling of the branches, sounded like the drizzling of rain outside a window. A bird spread its wings amongst the branches and flew away, its cries streaking past my head. I was praying with every step I took.
The trees were starting to become spa.r.s.e, and a murky mist was beginning to mix in with the backdrop of the forest. I picked up my pace, kicking up the acc.u.mulated leaves on the ground as I began to run. I couldn"t hear any music. When I left the forest, my eyes and face were illuminated by the rays of the sun. Lying on the plateau in the middle of the broad valley, was a mountain made up of an unbelievable amount of trash. Derelict cars without wheels and doors; rusty bicycles; fridges that were covered with decomposing leaves; and wardrobes whose colours had changed—everything was piled up in a dangerous equilibrium that had acc.u.mulated gradually and that could slow down time.
The roars of the ocean; the chirps of the birds; the cries of the insects—I couldn"t hear any of them. Not even the howls of the wind. I stood at the entrance of the valley. The world ends here. I can"t proceed any further.
I approached the mountain slowly, careful not to make any sounds. To scale the mountain of junk, I climbed onto the hood of a car, grabbed some buried prefab roofing and stepped on a heavily twisted road sign. The smell of rust, the smell of stale water and the smell of the acc.u.mulated years penetrated my nose.
I made it to what looked like the crater of a volcano. A steep slope extended downwards from my feet to the depression at the center of the mountain. I knelt down on a twisted cabinet and scanned the lowland; but a pang of dizziness suddenly hit me, and I almost collapsed, just like that.
There was no one around. The clear sunlight was drying up what remained of my hopes and dreams. I"m the only one here. Also—
The piano wasn"t there.
The piano that tightly bound Mafuyu and me together was nowhere to be seen.
In spite of that though, I placed my weak and trembling legs on the metal rack below and began my slow descent. When I reached the edge of the lowland, I saw a black shimmer in-between an old vending machine and a public phone. I scrambled my way towards that gleam, and in the process, tripped a few times and nearly fell.
The piano was buried heavily under a bunch of large trash, and I could only catch a glimpse of a part of its keyboard. It was like looking at the tip of an iceberg. Pushing away the wooden shelf to get a better view inside, I saw that the strings of the piano had almost completely snapped, and that its legs were broken as well.
Two seasonal cycles had already pa.s.sed, so it wasn"t surprising that the abandoned object was destroyed to the point that it was no longer salvageable.
I squat down on the pitted galvanized plate and took out my cellphone to check what time it was. It was way past two, the time of the performance that was written on the flyer.
Why am I so stupid? That wasn"t a message for me. It might just be that there"s really a concert hall called "Thieves" Market" in Paris. I had lost something that I couldn"t bear to lose, and lacked the courage to get it back. What a pathetic person I am, traveling on the trains for hours to reach the ends of the world, only to confirm that she won"t be returning to me. It was probably just a coincidence. The sunlight was gently shining on the back of my ears, but my tears couldn"t flow out of my eyes as the world grinded to a halt.
I gently caressed the edge of the piano, which looked like it was melting into the ground. Having absorbed the rays of the sun, the piano felt warm. That piano had belonged to Mafuyu"s mother, and was the same piano that had helped me find the fragments of myself, as well as my heartfelt desire.
But it was broken now, unable to play any music ever again. The only things left were the remnants of the distant past reverberating fuzzily in my ears.
I want to see Mafuyu so badly. My throat was being seared by my rising emotions.
Then shouldn"t I just go and see her?
Let"s go.
Let"s fly to the country located on the other side of the ocean.
And this time, I must properly say it to her.
I stood up and shook away the sound of the piano in my memories that was echoing in my illusion. As I turned away—
I saw a pure white silhouette on the peak of the mountain of trash.
Slowly, the magic that was shrouding the valley disappeared. The pure white dress and the maroon hair were dancing on a gust of wind that was pa.s.sing through the mountains.
I couldn"t make a sound. It wasn"t an illusion. The magic had already disappeared, but Mafuyu was right there in front of me—in reality, standing in a place I could reach with my outstretched hand.
Mafuyu"s here.
I wanted to call out her name, but all I could utter was a hoa.r.s.e sound. I could see her sapphire eyes widening. I leapt over a muddy scooter and dashed towards her, trampling over cardboard beer boxes and plastic bottles along the way. When I reached the slope of the mountain, I climbed up with all my might, disregarding the possible danger of a landslide.
"—Mafuyu!"
My voice finally came out. It"s Mafuyu. It is indeed her! She came. We can finally meet. We can finally see each other!
"Nao......mi."
The dumbfounded Mafuyu let out a faint murmur, then snapped back to reality and knelt down. She stretched her sandaled feet out timidly, then jumped onto a children"s desk a short distance below her and turned towards me. She was planning to make her way down.
"No, w-wait, it"s dangerous—"
While I was hesitating over my words, the drawer that Mafuyu was holding onto suddenly tilted erratically.
"—Kya!"
The surface of the trash slope began to crumble, and the fridge that I was standing on wobbled, causing me to fall forward. With my legs securely positioned and my arms stretched out as much as possible, I managed to catch the white feather that was fluttering down, and pulled it towards me.
My back crashed into what was probably the boot of an SUV, and coupled with the weight of Mafuyu"s body, that collision felt like it had squeezed all of the air in my body out through my nose and ears. The back of my body and the back of my head were a.s.saulted with pain, and my neck muscles twitched as the bone-rumbling sounds of the caving junk continued. That was dangerous......
"—S-Sorry!"
Mafuyu sat up on my stomach amid the settling dust.
"U-Urm, I was shocked, so......"
"Nah, it"s okay." Though I definitely would"ve died if anything sharp had been behind me. I couldn"t move—not because of the pain, but rather, because of the sweet and bitter emotions that were mixed up inside me. I continued staring at Mafuyu as I lay there. Her face, framed by her hair, was colored amber under the rays of the spring sun. She might"ve looked mature on the cover of her CDs, but that totally wasn"t the case here. Those slightly teary sapphire-blue eyes belonged to the girl that I knew very well—the girl that was easily angered, and that loved to cry.
I thought I would never get to see her again. The words jammed in my throat, as well as the boiling emotions surging inside me, were causing my lips to tremble.
"...... I never expected you...... to be here."
That was the only thing I could say. Mafuyu"s face gradually turned red.
"W-Why?" She placed her fists in my chest and moved her face close to mine. "The fact that you are here means you saw it, right? My performance schedule. That is why......."
"Eh? Ah, m-mmm."
All I had to do was believe.
"But it said two o"clock on the flyer. And there wasn"t anyone around when I came here, so......"
Mafuyu was blushing right down to her ears.
"T-T-Tha...... That is....... two o"clock in France"s time zone."
Mafuyu desperately tried to come up with an excuse. France"s time zone...... So that"s six in the morning?
"Ah, urm—"
"...... Were you lost again?"
"I was not lost!"
She hammered my chest. Oh well, whatever. She"s only twenty to thirty minutes late.
While I was late a full two years. But Mafuyu still came.
"I-I too......" stammered Mafuyu, with her eyes in tears, "wanted to call you or e-mail you so many times. But, I-I was not sure if you...... so......"
I felt an insurmountable pain in my chest where Mafuyu was pressing her hands.
"So if you had not noticed it, I was planning...... to forget you. It is difficult for me to take a break, and I was not sure when I could come back to j.a.pan, so I begged the publicity department to tweak the flyer a little. B-But what if you did not see it? What if you did not notice it? What would I do? I did think that....... t-there was no need to do something like that, that all I had to do was give you a call. But, because....... you never tried to contact me...... I was scared, I was so scared, but even then, if it was here, if it was this place......"
Mafuyu"s voice was about to be swallowed up by her tears, so I rested my hand gently on hers.
"...... Ah, s-sorry."
Mafuyu stood up. Her warmth left me; and I slowly sat up. Is it because she doesn"t want me to see her crying? Mafuyu immediately turned her face away when she noticed my gaze, and wiped the tears away from her eyes. Then, she jumped off the boot of the SUV.
"...... Mama"s piano......"
I slowly stood up as she mumbled to herself.
Mafuyu was walking unsteadily on the uneven ground, towards the center of the junkyard. The vision of her back seemed unreal—it felt like she would disappear in an instant under the sunlight if I turned my eyes away for even the slightest moment.
Mafuyu knelt before the buried piano. She didn"t move an inch, even after I had caught up to her and stopped right behind her. She was trembling.
"...... It will...... no longer play......"
A voice of helplessness.
Music no longer existed there. The magic that had bound us together had disappeared. Reality had returned to the ends of the world, and the place would welcome yet another seasonal cycle. But as time began to tick, Mafuyu and I were the only ones in that place.
So I called out Mafuyu"s name.
The kneeling Mafuyu looked up at me and my outstretched hand.
Her slender fingers entwined themselves with mine, and I pulled Mafuyu up. She was standing right in front of me, her sapphire eyes right next to mine.
"....... It was here...... that Mafuyu helped me find my ba.s.s."
I was slowly confirming each and every word I spoke.
"You played the song at dawn when the rain stopped. Do you still remember?"Mafuyu looked straight into my eyes and nodded.
"That was the exact moment....... I fell in love with you."
I conveyed my words slowly to Mafuyu, similar to how the rays of the sun transmitted their heat to the Earth after traveling a hundred and fifty million kilometers in a vacuum. Her blue eyes looked as though they were melting into the ocean, and her pink lips trembled several times as she tried to say something.
"M-Me...... too......"
Mafuyu"s face turned red again as she said that. But then again, my face was probably just as red as hers.
"I was in love with you...... way before that."
"When exactly?" My voice was trembling. What an idiotic question.
"I do not know."
Mafuyu closed her eyes and screamed into my chest.
"Before I realized it, I was already in love with you. A person like you!"
"...... Urm, well, sorry for that."
"Why are you apologizing?"
Mafuyu hammered my chest a few times, and even headb.u.t.ted me once. It was actually quite painful, so I lifted my hands to stop her—
But before I knew it, I was already hugging Mafuyu"s head and back tightly.
Her soft hair slipped in-between my fingers, and Mafuyu pressed her cheek against the shirt on my chest. She could probably hear my heart beating wildly. I knew I was doing something incredible, but I wasn"t about to let go.
In the end—Mafuyu circled her arms around my back as well.
Don"t turn back, spread your wings and soar away—I prayed. From the warmth that flowed through the tight grip on my hand, I knew Mafuyu was making the same wish as me. We leaned against each other, and watched in silence as our fragments flew past the ocean and away from us.