Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

２００２年１月１日
I picked up a stray cat on the way home.

THE surname ‘Fushiguro’ is not a very common one, even less common with this kind of writing: ‘伏’ for her fushi, knees bent and buckled, prostated to the floorboards tinted with the red of her blood, and ‘黒’ for guro and the inky black of her hair, mingling with crimsons and maddening reds.

But there are worse surnames, she thinks. There is ‘Kadenokōji’ with five characters that her hands will ache for, and in relation to that, there is ‘Ayanokōji’. Personally, she does not like the surname ‘Akechi’, as someone who once grew up as someone obsessed with history, more specifically the Sengoku Period featuring Oda Nobunaga. She just thinks that everyone named ‘Akechi’ will betray her somewhere along the line. Akechi Mitsuhide did, she adds to that thought. Perhaps, she can also add ‘Ōgami’ to that. They just give off an arrogant feel that she cannot help but shy away from. She had a classmate named Ōgami from elementary school. He was every bit of his name. But Fushiguro. Fushiguro... is not a very common surname.

Just like most working Japanese in their mid-twenties, she lived in a humble apartment, drank beer in an izakaya with her loud and red-faced coworkers, did too much overtimes for her own good, played games every now then, ate too much ramen and convenience store food, stayed in love hotels a little too much as well, and chose beer and smoke as her source of relief when love hotels and games became a bore for her. She dreamed of Roppongi too but everything there was too overpriced and she was kind of afraid that the hosts there would be too good in talking her out of her money and company but all of those facts were from a lifetime ago and now, she is a middle school student in Saitama, surname: Fushiguro. An uncommon surname. With an even more uncommon kanji combination. Well, the ‘guro’ part is rather normal but she particularly dislikes the ‘fushi’—it would have been nice if they used the character for ‘immortal’ instead. Maybe then, she would like it more but right now, Fushiguro hates it. (It should have been a clue already, she realizes years later. When fushi becomes a character that forced her to stay knelt down, when it could have been as beautifully written as immortality and eternity. They say that your name is what defines you. And ‘Fushiguro’ defines her more than it should have, a name bestowed from the paternal line, but was forced onto others. She should have known.)

Fushiguro remembers all the normalcy of being an office lady of a rather well-off company in her second year in junior high. She was in the middle of throwing the trash, walking at the back of her school and the moment she spots the nearby garden of the Gardening Club she barely even sees, she freezes. Ah, she can taste the alcohol on her lips and the stinging of the smoke that should be in her hands. She throws the trash and moves to face the windows of a random room. She sees herself: dark hair, cropped close to her neck. A pixie cut. Her past life liked her hair long, wavy and shining. She probably had too much hair products in her bathroom but she liked it that way and not... she fingers the edge of her hair but ends up touching her neck instead. She never cut it this short. But somehow, something within her tells her she looks pretty like this. Almost delicate.

But Fushiguro begins to be uncomfortable in her own skin. She does not feel like Fushiguro. She replies late when the teacher calls her in class, when her friends tap her shoulder, when she looks for her name in the class rankings for the exams. Fushiguro does not feel like Fushiguro but she is Fushiguro, in more ways than one. But really, she does not feel it that much. She does not think the surname ‘Fushiguro’ can even amount to anything because in the Fushiguro Family household, she is greeted by her meek father. She stopped asking where her mother was even before she acknowledged her lack of presence and Fushiguro is content with that. It is kind of frustrating that her father just comes and goes as he pleases. But she cannot do anything about that. Fushiguro just... she just does not care right now.

(Her mother from back then always disliked her bouts of emotion. She... struggles expressing her feelings. All of those things are bottled in her chest, her face heating up in an effort to try to spill it out but sometimes, Fushiguro just does not care. And her mother hated that, accused her of not loving her, told her that her dearest mother will he thrown away when she has the chance, and Fushiguro was tired of her. When she tried to tell her that she just needs time to form her words, a little more time to string them together properly so she can not offend someone or god forbid, her own mother, the woman screams, cries, and continues and continues on accusing her for things she does not understand. She just works a little slowly than others, okay? Her mother could not understand that. And sometimes, even Fushiguro does not feel like trying to understand. Sometimes, she grows annoyed over the smallest of things, wants to just scream back at her mother because god, the little apartment room they lived in felt so small, so, so, so small, and her mother knew nothing of privacy, touched her when she told her she felt claustrophobic.

Fushiguro does not know how to act around a father. She never had one, and she never felt the need to have one. She already had her hands full with a mother who asked for too much love and attention that Fushiguro cannot give because nobody told her how to do that. So this world should not expect her to know how to walk around this father.)

This act of uncaringness lasts even to her third year in middle school, her oversized sailor uniform finally fitting her body, her skirt shorter than it should be, and her teacher sitting right in front of her as she stands. Her fingers fiddle with each other behind her back. The teacher frowns at her. “Fushiguro, you need to pass your high school options within this week,” he sighs, tapping the desk, “I don’t want to have to call your guardian for something like this so pass it this week, alright?”

Fushiguro cocks her head, her hair permanently in a bob cut she decided to settle with. “Yes, sensei,” she answers.

Fushiguro does not know what to do about her future. For some reason, she feels like it will not amount to anything at the end, that being burdened by a name that means to prostate yourself and to bend down means that she will never be anything more than what she was born as. (She liked her name back then. She was named after her father—someone she barely knew—but she liked his name nonetheless. And by extension, hers too. Them sharing a surname and a given name, or a part of it, was the only thing that tied them together. She never needed him. She never wanted him. She told herself that over and over again that it felt true. When her elementary school teacher asked her what she wished for, she instinctively said she wanted to see her father again because it was the right answer. She did it again, and again, and again, and again. Being pitied was disgusting but if it was what made people look at her, she did not mind it.) And something itches. Something itches at the back of her throat. Something that pushes her to do something, to become something, and she has no idea what that is supposed to be.

She already died once. What is the point of this one?

She stares at the sheet she is supposed to past, still as empty as before. Her name is not even there. When she thinks of her surname, she thinks of something short, something that does not have that annoying character in her name. She thinks that her name will be written in soft quick strokes and she will look at it and become satisfied. Family used to be an important thing for her once upon a lifetime—not in the right ways but still important—but Fushiguro, right now, does not feel like Fushiguro, and the father who comes home late at night from another overworked day, a salaryman as normal as they can get. She knows she is Fushiguro but she cannot feel like Fushiguro. It feels like there is something missing. She stumbles on her feet as she tries to fit in this body, she shakes at the weight of herself, she heaves at the feeling of her own breath. Fushiguro is not Fushiguro but she is still Fushiguro and that office lady from the past. But there is something missing.

She feels like she does not belong. She had a full-body mirror back then too but Fushiguro’s mirror this time around has dark blue rims instead of white. She used to be a bit underweight because of overworking, the beer would make her bloated for a while but the lack of sustenance and constant overtime simply snap it away. Her skin was tight on her bones, ribs proud and portruded when she stretched. Some men liked it, adored the flatness of her chest because many lonely salarymen still had the image of the junior high first love at the back of their head; they would caress her pale nape and some treat her so gently she felt fragile. Fushiguro is shapely now. Her breasts are heavy, not heavy enough to grab her classmates’ attention but heavy enough that when she runs, she feels the weight of it. She is a lot smaller too. She feels so out of place—this is her body, why does it feel wrong? Her limbs are too short, the way she walks is too awkward, she trips on her own feet, and she doubles to the bathroom sink and throws up and the salaryman-father puts a hand on her back, whispering if she is okay, asking if there is anything he can do for her, what she is feeling, please, you can tell me anything—she holds her face with her shaking hands and she died once. What more does she need to do?

She was a teenager, probably in high school, when she read a particularly interesting book—‘あおぞらとくもりぞら’—‘Aozora to Kumorizora’, or as its English name suggests, ‘Azure and Claude’. It centers about a high school girl and a man who has the ability to control other’s people body and make them commit suicide. While people found ‘Parasite in Love’ and ‘Three Days of Happiness’ by the same author, ‘Miaki Sugaru’, their favorite, ‘Azure and Claude’ appealed to her unlike any of the author’s other works.

Maybe it was just a foreshadowing of the future to come, this body dysphoria that she knows will take a long. long, long time to leave. ‘Without her, without Azure, did this world have any meaning?’ The main character thought, moments just before his sweet Azure wrapped her arms around his neck, pretending to choke him to death just as he made her do. ‘Aa, Azure... what can I possible do for her?’ Fushiguro can be a superstitious person when she needs to be, but never has she believed in fate.

And so, she still passes her high school options and her homeroom adviser is satisfied with her answers. She goes to a high school, wraps herself in the comforts of her blazer, lets the wind tickle the skirt right above her thighs despite how much the disciplinary committee scolds her, and drifts. Her father does not ask about school and he only smiles in the few times they see each other for breakfast, content with these little interactions and Fushiguro does not mind this. She is too stuck in her head and when she finally gets friends in high school, a girl who bleached her hair despite getting scolded and another band of boys who drag her to convenience stores and arcades while in their uniform, Fushiguro gets the first taste of beer in her life and she relaxes for once. Cold beer has never felt this delicious, and when the cigarette finally arrives, Fushiguro feels like herself again. An office lady sharing drinks with her coworkers and shying away from her department manager who insists on pouring more drinks, the people around them laughing as more and more of them gets roped in getting another glass.

Fushiguro gets a few more friends too, those with hair as black as her own, not standing out as much as her other friends. They still share the same hobbies though, but they pull her by the shoulder and tell her to keep quiet. They share a cigarette with her and says that it came from their older brothers and sisters, and one said she got hers from her mother and the bruise on her collarbones thicken. Fushiguro is stuck in a normal school. Too normal to be anything note worthy and she feels, for once, like she belongs.

She closes her eyes and feels weightless.

This cycle goes on and on.

And on and on.

The paper dictating her plans for the future appears again when she is in third year of high school before she knows it. Maybe she goofed off for too long? Her name is still in the Top Twenty rankings; she did not do that badly, and her father never complained. Not like he ever complains. She cannot even remember what college she chose the last time and when she looks at her father, he smiles at her and says she can be anything she wants and ‘otōsan will manage to work it out somehow’—Fushiguro hates not feeling anything for this man. They barely talk, barely interact, and she is sure that her father is reaching the age where he is too old to work. But ‘otōsan will manage to work it out somehow’ and Fushiguro is ungrateful. How is she supposed to interact with this person? How do people act around fathers? What if she smiles and he notices that she is forcing herself to do so? What if she tries to pay attention and she will be accused of not giving enough again? She—

Her father dies during the winter of her third year in high school, Fushiguro holds his picture frame alone, and her body heavy is with her mourning clothes.

She did not love him, no. (She regrets not loving him but she cannot control herself like how she cannot control this body.) Fushiguro always had a complicated relationship with fathers. She never grew up with one, stuck as a child born of an affair last time around, shamefully carrying his surname as her mother insisted for her to be put in the family registry of a man she never knew but gave her this pretty dollhouse once upon a time. A dollhouse that made noises when she flushed the small toilet, that made the ‘ting!’ noise in ovens, that made shower noises, that could be carried anywhere and everywhere. (Everyone was jealous of her dollhouse.) She does not remember what his family looked like but she remembers his children were old enough to be her parents. She did not carry last time’s father’s frame since he died before she could see him again, but she does this time, and she carries it like she cannot carry its burden.

Coworkers of her father arrives and whispers condolences. Fushiguro does not know their names but a kind one tells her that she will be eighteen soon and by then, she can stand on her own.

She graduates alone, in a dining table for two. Guilt eats her heart from inside out.

Her father saved a lot of money, maybe enough for college but Fushiguro... Fushiguro just cannot think of herself going to college so instead, she walks up to the izakaya near her home, gives her blank résumé, blinks once and twice, makes use of her long lashes and admittedly pretty face, and the master of the restaurant who is too kind for his own good takes pity in her. She is saddled with cleaning the dishes and chopping the vegetables. She hates the men in the izakaya who sometimes glances at the way the apron hugs her hips, commenting about how she is fresh out of high school, an almost jōshi kōsei, a JK they beat themselves to but sleeping with a JK will drag them to prison so they stare at her instead, eighteen with hair curling around her face delicately, her limbs small and unworked. The master of the restaurant frowns at this. “Are you sure you want to work here, Fushiguro?” He asks. He does not know that she no longer knows what she wants. She died once. Is she supposed to die for the second time again?

Fushiguro tilts her head, hair falling above her face. She has a job in the morning as a convenience store cashier and a job in the night in this izakaya, money falling to her lap with what little money she spends except with the occasional clothes and food. Fushiguro does not know why she is even here. Why she works, why she pushes herself, why she sleeps late and wakes up early, why she is named ‘Fushiguro’ and why she was born again in the first place. Maybe she is just trying to keep herself busy so she does not have to worry about the future and the past, more the past than the future. She was content in her first life. She was content in being a normal office lady, content in the drinks she shared with her coworkers, content in living by herself. She was happy like that but then Fushiguro arrived. Fushiguro arrived and she lost so much of herself that she has no idea what to do anymore.

Why is she even doing this? Why does she take on two jobs that will leave her with bags under her eyes? Why did she not go to college instead? Why does she not just—

Just stop?

“Ah.”

The answers to her questions arrive in the first day of 2002, the fireworks from the New Year’s festival still echoing and fresh in her ears, the date who asked her out for this day having been ghosted because she found him boring. The cold wind stings her reddening cheeks. It is the first day of 2002. Fushiguro finds herself standing right in front of a wounded man in an alleyway, a trope she has read in the shōjo manga of the past and the future. She crouches in front of him, staring at his delicate features but large frame. Pretty lashes. Blood is all that she can smell but there is something about this man that tugs her to his side. She lifts her hand, and it is the first day of 2002, New Year, and the festival's fireworks still echo in her ears. The phone in her handbag vibrates, perhaps from the date she bailed out on. Maybe her coworkers greeting her a ‘happy new year’.

Her wrist is suddenly grabbed by a hand before she can even touch the man’s cheek. A single eye opens. Green. Green. So vibrant and sickeningly green. It is the first day of 2002 and when she looks up, the fireworks of the New Year's Festival are still going off, shuttering in the sky and shrouding them in lights but for some reason, all she sees is the green of this man's eyes. He speaks, “Who the hell are you?” A potty mouth. What a shame.

Her head moves to the side, a habit she cannot help. Her bobbed hair curls around her. Fireworks explode. It is the first day of 2002 and all she hears is the footsteps of the people in the streets, the ruffling of her kimono, and the fireworks that look green with how bright this man’s eyes are.

“Fushiguro Tomie. And you are?”

THE given name ‘Tomie’ is written beautifully in heavy and complicated strokes; thirteen strokes and another fifteen concluding to twenty-eight strokes in total. She can say she quite likes this given name. Her father seemed to love it and he would close his eyes, the only time he looked like he was at ease and not overworked, and he would say, “When I first saw you, I thought that this must be a miracle... a blessing,” and he loved Tomie so much that Tomie did not know what to do with it, even when she was not the office lady with a drinking problem. Past-Tomie walked on eggshells around him and longed for a mother; OL-Tomie was just lost. Thirteen strokes for ‘blessing’ and fifteen strokes for ‘fate’—a blessed fate.

Tomie did not think she had that much of a blessed fate when she tried to jump off the school’s roof a few days after she remembered. The only thing that stopped her was the soft voice of her father and him promising to her that he would give her a blessed fate even if it took everything out of him. And it did. It took everything from him. She took everything from

him. Tomie was there when the doctors said that he died of overworking and she was there to witness his coworkers having a similar gaunt look as her father. They murmured and said that he was a good man and no matter how many times they invited him out to eat and drink, he would deny and say that he had a daughter waiting at home and he would never come home drunk with her around. Tomie realized, then, that the beer in their refrigerator was never really touched. Not until she tore through them like an animal. Really, the picture frame that she held that day was heavy, and the urn that sits near the altar is even heavier.

The master of the izakaya, Yamaoka who Tomie just calls ‘taishō’, worries about her constantly. He came from the countryside and finds it very dangerous for a young woman like Tomie to live alone. When Tomie asks more about him, Yamaoka confesses that his father was the head monk of a Buddhist temple and he ran away before he could succeed the position. Yamaoka even showed Tomie a younger picture of his when he was practicing as a monk. He found soltitude in running an izakaya though. Tomie is thankful for him, honestly. He lets her and the other part-timer take home the food, not even the leftovers but actual fresh food, and he always reminds them to stay safe on the way home.

Yamaoka is not a father figure. Tomie thinks she can never have a father like that. She never had a brother too and she has long passed the woeful teenage years of seeking affection from an older man, so she neither finds a father nor a brother in Yamaoka's kindness. “Fushiguro-chan’s been looking a bit upbeat the past few days,” her coworker, Kojima, chimes in curiously. She leans against the mop she had just been using.

Kojima, a year older than herself, is a college student of the nearby university. Tomie heard from Yamaoka that Kojima lives in one of those dingy apartments with thin walls and so many rumors of strange hauntings that anyone will have the decency to avoid it.

She wiggles a finger at Tomie's face, “Did you get a boyfriend?”

Tomie wonders: “No.”

“Aw, come on, Fushiguro-chan, you don’t need to keep secrets from me—”

“I guess,” Tomie pauses, “I got a pet.”

She supposes she can put it that way. A pet. She cannot help but add now that she finds fondness in comparing her new object of interest to a cat. (The mother from before always told her she had a strange obsession with the unfortunate. She likes to think it is because she liked being around sad things. She adored being sad as a child. It was the only emotion that made sense to her. Anger was fleeting. Happiness was fleeting. But she was always, always sad, even when she was having fun. Or maybe she just liked feeling better than other people, made her feel like she was better.) “I picked up a cat last night. He’s a bit big,” she confesses.

Kojima’s eyebrows rise in interest. “A cat? Oh, I’m actually not surprised. You seem like a cat person.”

“I never really thought about it,” Tomie muses. She does not think she can be responsible enough to take care of someone else when she can barely take care of herself. She puts down the dish she is washing. “Is there a difference?”

Tomie comes home earlier that night. Kojima had reported to Yamaoka that ‘their Tomie’ actually has hobbies now, and is taking care of a cat, and Yamaoka smiled widely at her, looking like he was genuinely happy for her. Tomie’s head throbs and her body stops feeling like hers again. She reaches up to touch her neck and she nods her head, the edges of her bobbed hair brushing against the back of her palm. She licks the top of her lio unconsciously, “I’ll be going then,” her voice is muted. She walks back home. Somewhere along the way, she passes by her old junior high where she first remembered, and the roof where the place that comes after death sits silently.

Her tongue pokes the inside of her cheek, muscle memory leading her back to the apartment she cannot get rid of. It is the second day of 2002 and so many people are still busy with celebrations, winter is still upon them, and Tomie forgets what it feels like to take a break. ‘Fushi’ to kneel, and ‘guro’ for how black her hair is, not even the red of her blood making it any different in appearance. She opens the door, and ‘Kuro’ is there. The cat she picked up from the festival yesterday is still there on the couch, a remote control on his hand, flipping through channel after channel. He looks like he is at home. A cat, she calls him. “Kuro,” she calls because she has nothing else to call him, “I’m home.”

The cat, burly and intimidating, boredly looks at her. He is strangely pleasant to see despite the bad bruising on his face, his chest exposed to see the rushed bandages she fixed up in the morning before she went to her job in the convenience store. “Have you eaten?” Tomie asks when he does not respond. The cat grunts at her and she only notices the food on her coffee table then. She remembers sitting there with her beer in the middle of the night, when her father was too tired to hear the fizz of her drinks. She automatically moves to take off her shoes, hanging her coat and her scarf on a nearby rack. “Do you like the name ‘Kuro’?” The television answers her back. “I think ‘Pochi’ is pretty cute. Or maybe ‘Kō’?”

“Are you, like, one of those women?” A gruff voice. Tomie has not heard him speak since he demanded her identity. His voice is too deep to be pleasant, too aggressive to be attractive. Tomie would have been scared if she cared a little.

“What women?”

He scoffs. “Those women who keep guys as pets, you know?” He leans back to the couch, waving a hand just to prove a point. His eyes shamelessly rake up and down her figure. Tomie ignores him. “Give guys a place to say, food, and sex, in exchange for some—” He grins. “Even more sex? I don’t know, whatever shit you need. ‘Cause if that’s all you want, you got me, onēsan. Call me whatever you like.”

Tomie walks right behind him, hands placed on the top of the couch, right beside his arm. She leans down. “Pochi?” Her eyes stare at his; deeply green. He lets her touch him. Her fingers run across his cheekbones, under his eyes, pretty, pretty green. He grimaces. Tomie raises an eyebrow. Her fingers stop at the bruise on his face. “Kō?”

“How’s it written?” He pushes his face in front of hers. Tomie finds herself focusing on his eyes even more. Is he a halfie? She has not met people with such pretty eyes before. Westerners do not count. Tomie never got along with them.

“Like ‘light’?”

“That’s the opposite of ‘Kuro’.”

“Then ‘happiness’?”

The cat’s eyebrows furrow. “Are you messing with me?”

“Then what do you want me to call you?”

His gaze turns into a glare. “Fine. ‘Kuro’, or whatever,” Tomie straightens her back, stretching a little before her hands find their way back to his hair. Her shampoo smells masculine on him, her fingers threading through hair as dark as hers.

The cat—Kuro, Tomie temporarily decides—looks a bit older than her, but a pet is a pet. She only heard about these kinds of men from her coworkers before; a sponsor, of sorts, except their ‘pet’ lives together with them and is pampered. Tomie has never taken care of anything. (Her mother said she was too selfish for it.) But people do not need to be fed, they do not need to be bathed. If Tomie lets this man in her apartment, he can just pick up on the things he needs to do. And besides, Tomie cannot take care of anyone else but company seems good. This apartment is feeling emptier than usual, anyway. And Yamaoka and Kojima are getting worried for her. Getting a cat will be good for her. Not really a cat but she—having a purpose seems better than having none at all.

She tilts Kuro’s face up, down, then from left to right. “Pretty,” she comments. “Do you need anything?” She finally asks again. She sits beside him on the couch, his height and size dwarfing her. Tomie tells herself to feel scared. She used to be so afraid of men back then, having grown up with no real man to look up to. She latched onto every single older man she could find a lifetime ago. (Her childhood friend’s father who gave her gifts growing up, but a harsh slap in reality had her mother’s friend crying to her mother and saying that her husband was cheating. An older student whose hand crept to her shoulder and asked if he could pat her head; she throws up. A heavy gasp on her lips, pleading eyes—she feared them. She felt weak around them.) But this world makes her feel uncaring. She sees her mother’s face on everyone, and when she looks away this time’s father replaces that face. His urn is right there, waiting, looking at her, the man she took everything from.

She reaches to the beer on the table and she downs it in one go. The cat does not say anything, just watching a drama in thr screen unfold. Tomie feels him beside her—the cat who is going to be a freeloader in her house just because she cannot stand being alone despite driving everyone out of her life. With a pet, she can easily set boundaries, right? Her mother was too close. Her father was too far. And authoritative figures never sat well with her. She remembers screaming at her mother that she was sick of it all and she ended up apologizing on the floor and whispering that she was wrong and she would never leave, don’t worry, kāchan—Tomie pulls a strand of her hair out of her face. She makes the computations in her head; she cannot afford another person living with her but the strain gives her a reason to work harder.

She gently puts her head to rest on the couch. From her faint memories, Claude sits beside Azure in his small apartment. She leans on his shoulder, in her high school uniform, Miaki Sugaru embellishing her in every man’s dream—a pretty young girl fixing poor little him—and Azure asks what he are the things he like and he hesitatest but manages out: “Clocks. Ferris wheels. Music boxes. Sunflowers. Windmills. Merry-go-rounds.” Ah, then Claude-san must like slow-revolving things. And Azure asks again as Claude comes into a conclusion, which he likes more between the things that slowly revolve and her. Claude says the former. And Azure stands, twirls ever so slowly. “Well then, allow me to present the slowly-revolving me.” Tomie closes her eyes.

“Hey, Kuro-chan,” Tomie calls. Her cat bristles as if annoyed at the name but he still grunts. The only light comes from the television screen and the doorway’s. “I’ll bring you a gift tomorrow since you’re my new pet—” She pushes off the couch and puts her head on her cat’s lap. An empty, empty apartment. A father she cannot call hers. A mother begging to be called hers. An urn that is so quiet it is defeaning. A pet cat that came out of nowhere. A missing purpose. A strange tug. A life unlived. A scar untold. Six strokes for ‘fushi’, eleven strokes for ‘guro’, thirteen strokes for ‘tomi’, and fifteen strokes for ‘e’—a blessed fate. “Good night, Kuro-chan.”

THE Diving Pool is a novella collection by Ogawa Yōko back in the 90s. Tomie finds her favorite book in the corner of a bookstore while searching for books concerning how to take care of pets. She skimmed through the usual ‘don’t intimidate them’, ‘make sure you show them how much you love them’ before she heeds the call for her favorite book. The Diving Pool. She loved it as a teenager and even more as she is today. She cannot just wait for ‘Azure and Claude’ considering the years between 2002 and when Miaki Sugaru begins displaying his ‘sweet high school girl fixes sad boy’ stories which she cannot help but like. But ‘The Diving Pool’ is ripe for the taking and now, her arms are full of clothes from a hyaku-en shop and more recently, this new book. It features three stories: The Diving Pool, Pregnancy Diary, and lastly, Dormitory—she favors ‘The Diving Pool’ the most.

Tomie sits on a random bench, contemplating as she holds ‘The Diving Pool’ in her hands. She woke up earlier still in the lap of her new freeloader—perhaps the counterpart of herself when she was living with her father still. He was awake then, watching morning television. She wonders if he moved from his spot. She wonders if he changed his bandages because it definitely did not look like it. When she began preparing breakfast for the two of them, he ate normally, and then, she took a bath before him, and then he followed, and then he returned to the couch as she cleaned up his mess from last night, and she blinked—like a pet, she thinks. He really is like a pet. Is this how it is going to be like all the time? She does not mind it but—how long is this going to last? She expected for him to leave while she slept but it seems like this pet-thing will go on for a few more days. Maybe months.

Her thumb rests on a page of the book, the bag of clothes on her arm. She peeks at the living room but no disappointment comes when she does not see Kuro there. Even when she goes around to call for the name she gave him and no one appeared, she still struggles to form any sort of disappointment. It is not like she cannot feel—Tomie remembers laughing and she misses her friends so much that it hurts just to remember but sometimes, sometimes, there are moments that there is nothing left of her and she knows she should feel something, anything but whatever this is supposed to be but—nothing. She looks down to her bag of clothes and puts it on the couch. A new mess was made on the table. She passes by her father’s old room where his urn is. Out of practice, she easily slips to kneel down and claps her hands before relaxing. She is supposed to say her regards but she has nothing to say.

When she turns around, her little cat is there, still as big and burly as he appeared a while ago. He barely looks like anything with the light on his back, merely a silhouette. He is almost intimidating. “Your pet’s going to feel unwanted if you don’t at least try to look for it, you know,” he remarks.

Tomie cannot help but walk up to him, her favorite book forgotten on the floor. She barely reaches anything above his chest. “Oh,” she exhales. Her hand reaches for his cheek again, the spor under his eyes—perhaps, her favorite part of him. She is not sure. “Was my pet sad?”

“The right answer’s ‘very’, right?”

(Zen’in Tōji meets Fushiguro Tomie on the first day of 2002, in the outskirts of the Kamimachi Hikawa Shrine. And a spanner in the works or not, the world will continue ticking slowly, a slowly-revolving trick. For whose purpose is it, Tomie wonders. For whose purpose is it that she was named after a blessed fate that she does not have? Perhaps, this blessed fate was never for hers, but child that will breathe in her womb and tear its way out of her stomach. Thirteen strokes for ‘tomi’ and fifteen strokes for ‘e’—well, Fushiguro has always been a strange surname. She should have expected it.)

•   fushiguro is written as 「伏黒, fushiguro 」
•   kadenokōji is written as 「勘解由小路, kadenokouji」
•   ayanokōji is written as 「綾小路, ayanokouji」
•   akechi is written as 「明智, akechi」; a famous person with the same surname is akechi mitsuhide 「明智光秀, akechi mitsuhide」 who is best known for the death of oda nobunaga 「織田信長, oda nobunaga」 during the sengoku period 「戦国時代, warring states period」.
•   ōgami is written as 「大神, oogami」 which means ‘large god’ and is also very similar to 「狼, ookami」 which means ‘wolf’.
•   ol is written as 「オーエル, ooeru」 which is literally ‘office lady’.
•   sensei is written as 「先生, teacher」
•   aozora to kumorizora 「あおぞらとくもりぞら, azure and claude」literally means ‘blue sky and cloudy sky’. it was originally a novel by miaki suguru, eventually adapted into a manga. it is about a girl and a man who can possess people in order to manipulate them into committing suicide. miaki-sensei’s other works are also rather famous.
•   otōsan 「お父さん, otousan」 means father while okāsan 「お母さん, okaasan」 means mother.
•   joshi kōsei or jk 「女子高生, joshi kousei」 are literally high school girls.
•   izakaya 「居酒屋, izakaya」 are japanese drinking bars.
•   tomie is written as 「福縁, tomie」
•   taishō 「大将, taishou」 means ‘boss’, among many others.
•   pet 「ペット, petto」: while tōji is not really a ‘pet’, it is a popular term that people use when rich women take care of a man and takes care of them. it can also be himo 「ひも, himo」 which is the more proper term for a man who mooches off a woman.
•   pochi 「ポチ」and kuro「クロ」 are common names for pets, the latter meaning ‘black’.
•   two writings are presented for kō: first is light, 「光, hikari」 and happiness, 「幸, shiawase」
•   the diving pool 「ダイヴィング・プール, daibingu pūru」 is a collection of novellas by ogawa yōko 「小川洋子, ogawa youko」in 1990. it is famous for changing the idea of domesticity of women in households.

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僕は今日も　　today, i, too

Chapter Text

1995 年 9 月 11 日
The urge was there. It was always there, I think.

THE Tomie before Tomie became Tomie did not read many books aside from the ones assigned to her in class. Her textbooks sit on the shelf beside her bed and her bag only had notebooks with barely any notes in them. Fushiguro Tomie was not a reader, nor was she the type to skip classes. She was normal. Perhaps a little kinder than most people judging by how well-liked she is in her neighborhood but aside from that, Fushiguro Tomie before Tomie became Tomie was a painfully normal girl who had normal hobbies and had a normal life. But it has always been there.

The urge.

She faces the mirror—hair too short, lips in a natural (too natural smile because Tomie has always been a happy girl with a happy father and a happy life; the Tomie after Tomie became Tomie has turned Tomie into a different person and she cannot find it in herself to be apologetic for it). The urge is there. What urge? She asks herself day after day but struggles to find the answer. She wonders what the Before-Tomie does all day. She does not read a lot of books and there is no internet to be hooked on, so what does she do? It takes her three more days to find out that Tomie likes to visit the local temple.

Tomie from the other life was a Buddhist as well, but never as avid of a Buddhist as Before-Tomie, and she had a fascination over the Amida Nyorai—the Buddha of Infinite Light. It is said that praying to him will grant you rebirth in his paradise, the Western Pure Lands, as they call it. Was Before-Tomie aspiring for enlightenment? What was she chasing for in this temple? What makes this temple so important to the Before-Tomie that the Present-Tomie still finds herself walking to it unconsciously. The urge, she realizes belatedly as she stands before the Kawagoe Daishi, the temple of Amida Nyorai.

"Fushiguro-kun," calls out a monk of the temple.

And another, "Fushiguro-kun."

And another.

Another.

Another.

The urge comes from habit. That must be the case. Before-Tomie came here so often that the monks already knew her. What was she praying for? Salvation? Enlightenment? Longevity? Reincarnation in the Pure Lands? She had originally thought that though she only recently recovered her memories from her previous life, she is still Before-Tomie, little Tomie so blind to the world, Tomie with eyes too wide for her face, Tomie whose smile is natural on her lips, Tomie who prefers her hair short. Fushiguro Tomie with the odd surname. Who is Fushiguro Tomie?

"Tomie," whispers her father. His voice is a smooth-sailing trip to another dilemma but Tomie does not let her discomfort show. He is so gentle and patient with her that Tomie does not know what to do. "I noticed you've been reading lots of books for the past few months—" She almost flinches. "And here... I saw it in the bookstore nearby. You've been getting good grades in English so I thought this could be good practice."

It took fifteen years for 'The Coin Locker Babies' by Murakami Ryuu to be translated and another decade for it to be republished by another company. Tomie encounters the book again when her father who rarely buys anything for himself comes home with an English translation of it. His cheeks are a little bit red from the heat of the days after the summer stench of August but his eyes are all dewy and excited. He looks at the book, then at Tomie, and then Tomie realizes that her father is still the 'I can never buy anything for myself' type of person. Because he offers the book to her, one she does not even like but that is a fact he does not know. He repeats his words, as if thinking that Tomie did not hear him, "Tomie's been interested in books and—..." Better grades in English, she knows.

Tomie accepts the book begrudgingly and flips it a few pages to see the jarring first sentence. She stretches her lips into a smile though, lets a few words of gratitude slip, and puts it by her desk. She picks a random page and puts a bookmark in it. That way, her father will think that she actually read the book.

'The woman pushed on the baby's stomach and sucked its penis into her mouth; it was thinner than the American menthols she smoked and a bit slimy, like raw fish. She was testing to see if the baby would cry, but the little arms and legs were still, so she peeled away the plastic wrapping over its face. She lined a cardboard box with towels, laid the baby inside, and taped the box shut. Then she tied it with string and wrote a made-up name and address on the side in big print.' Tomie struggles to translate it in her head but she remembers the original Japanese edition well enough for her to feel the same emotions she felt the first time she read it. And the ending, though fascinating to read, still bothered her to some degree.

She remembers the first chapter vividly; young Kikuyuki—Kiku, as he is called—looked up at the tall figure of the 'Father' who looked nothing like him. The 'Father' was tanned and he had rounder eyes than Kiku's and so he asks, "How come I'm not in the picture? And why doesn't my father look Japanese?" Tomie had Christian friends in the past. It was always about Kiku until it wasn't, until Hashi came to end the story, and so did the urge come.

Kiku and Hashi, and the urge to kill their mothers who abandoned them at birth.

Beneath Hashi's hands was the mangled jaw of his mother, the eroticism of death brought forth by Murakami and the end of the world. Tomie disliked Murakami Ryuu's works, though fond of Murakami Haruki's though they share the same fatal flaw—how strange they write the women in their stories, Tomie used to think, bathed in the ink of their tell-tales. "Is this why you gave this to me?" She turns her head to her father, for once, sitting beside her on their couch as the TV calls upon yet another issue of 'coin locker' babies.

Her father shifts uncomfortably. The news of yet another baby abandoned in a coin-operated locker flies in one ear to another. "You seem to like stories like this," he comments. His hand gestures to her room.

"You don't need to worry about that," Tomie leans back. She nods to the news and ignores the weight of the translated book in her hands. It feels heavier than it should be. "I don't like kids."

2002 年 1 月 5 日
Kuro likes to eat meat.

THE Diving Pool's center of attention is a young girl in love with a boy. His first appearance is as follows: 'Sometimes I wish I could describe how wonderful I feel in those few seconds from the time he spreads his arms above his head, as if trying to grab hold of something, to the instant he vanishes into the water. But I can never find the right words. Perhaps it's  because he's falling through time, to a place where words can never reach.' When Tomie first found 'The Diving Pool' in a café near the edges of Tokyo, she was first enraptured by its plot—she was a teenager then who walked in a tight rope when it came to love, relationships, and the things that make those up; she was a natural overthinker, after all—and then that line came, the main character who was never named so deeply in love with 'Jun' and Tomie can only imagine how devastated the main character was when her chances with Jun vanished in a blink of an eye. Tomie thinks she deserves it, the main character whose cruelty ended with a battered child.

Jun looks at the main character, 'I was always watching you,'  he says and Tomie's heart dropped for the main character even though she found herself disgusted at her.

Tomie is always watching Kuro too. This is the fifth day of his stay in her home and at first, Tomie thought she was going to be uncomfortable with a man in the house—tall and intimidating with a dark demeanor, a cocked smile, and hands so big that the Tomie from before would have flinched away—but she finds herself calm. Her pet sleeps in her father's old room. He also wears the clothes her father wears. Well, only a few of it because while her father was skinny and frail, her Kuro is the opposite of it. Kuro is very tall. Almost double her size. And she is certain that if Kuro wants to manhandle her and kill her, like those men from horror movies and shows, she will be left alone on her deathbed. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Tomie keeps the cat around. She... does not mind dying in his hands. What a romantic thought, she notices. She always liked it when a character is pinned down by another, a blade to their throat, and they will say, 'What an honor it is to die by your hands.' Or maybe, like that one from the famous film, where a young hunter falls for a wild princess, 'You're beautiful,' and just like that, love blooms.

Tomie is fond of books but not fond enough to keep them this time around. She keeps 'The Diving Pool'' though. She passes by it sitting on the shelf when she wakes up. And she likes to stare at it for a while before she leaves—the empty, empty pool with a sinking, sinking, sinking chair. It always made her feel things. Strange things. Like the feeling when you reach land after hours in the sea. Her body was floating, weighed down by the waters and yet still firm on the ground, feet planted on the cold floor with indoor slippers. She felt like dancing in the clouds

And then, after that, she would exit her room and prepare breakfast. Sometimes, she forgets that Kuro is here until he comes out of his room and grins at her. Kuro is a ghost of her home, coming out of her father's room, smiling at her like her father never did, and never wearing the shirt her father used to wear. ('Too small,' he says.) Tomie had thought she was searching for someone to resemble her father but Kuro is not that. Never that. He is a freeloader who is shameless at it. There are times when he is cold, half-angry and half-feral. (The third day of his stay, his green eyes became so dark it was almost black. He felt angry. Tomie knows angry. Tomie knows what it is like to be hit. He was irritable, then, and glared at her whenever she moved. The fourth day: he looked at Tomie, torn between something she cannot read. His hand crept to her neck, a tickle more than a threat. "Your cat was being moody. Don't you have anything to say?" Tomie looked for a reason to care. She failed.) Today, Kuro is a languid cat. He sprawls on the couch but he is too rough to be considered elegant. Maybe calling him a 'cat' was a wrong choice. Kuro is not very cat-like sometimes.

"Kuro," she calls and he twitches. She puts a plate down the low table in front of the couch, her back hitting Kuro's legs that are stretched out. He peers at her from under his dark hair. "Peaches." She offers.

Kuro stays silent for a while until he opens his mouth. No words come out of it. Tomie takes the hint and leans forward, popping a slice. His teeth crunches on it loudly. He chews, and chews, and he opens his mouth again, "More," he says simply. A cat, Tomie calls him. A pet. But as she pops another peach in his mouth, Kuro grabs her wrist, his hand completely wrapped around her. She lets him hold her longer but when he finally gulped down the peach, his mouth shifts its attention to her seized hand. Like a pet, again, she thinks, squinting when Kuro drags his tongue from the small juice of the peach to the apex of her fingers, rough and wet, a little sweet-smelling and cold. His green eyes have always looked vibrant—like poison, that is what it must be—a grotesque one that eats her alive. She never liked the color green. She found it too distasteful for her taste, its murky color. But Kuro's is too bright for it to fall in that category and most of the time, like now, Tomie lets the colors of his eyes slip from her gaze. She focuses on what Kuro is saying: "What do you really want?"

"What do I want?" Tomie mimics.

He stretches across the couch, leaving Tomie sitting up. He reaches to grab another peach but instead of eating it, he throws it to her. Tomie catches it clumsily. "You're poor," Kuro says with a snort. Tomie's father's clothes are tight on him but he moves like he does not care. His leg is hiked up on the couch, another hanging on the floor. "You can barely afford yourself and you wanna afford me? Neesan, I don't really mind, you know? Free food, free place, but," he sits up all of the sudden, his hand grabbing her once again but this time, his fingers curling around her collar instead of her wrist, "Come on—" His lips ghost right above hers. "You can tell your Kuro anything you want."

Tomie pauses. She bites on the peach despite having her Kuro sitting in front of her. Her pet's eyebrow twitches, miffed but bites the other end of it anyway. She thinks. What does she want? She works two jobs a day: one in the morning for the convenience store and another in the evening for the izakaya. While it is true that this money is enough for herself, a little too less for her apartment and her hobbies, but just enough to live by, so why is she letting this man stay with her?She does not even know him but she lets him wear her father's clothes, lets him longue on the couch like he owns the place, lets him come back with the stench of perfume clinging to him, and she lets him sleep on her lap like a lover. A pet, she says, and he agrees with that too.

A pet she cannot afford.

"Why? Does Kuro want to buy something?" Her teeth crushes on the peach. Sweet, maybe too sweet.

The peach falls on her lap when Kuro bites to it too. He licks the edge of his lips, the juice of the fruit grazing his scar. Tomie becomes tempted to ask him what happened to it. Tomie does not have any scars from this life or the last. Everyone called her a 'safe' person but if scars determine safety then what does that make Kuro? "Come on, neesan," Tomie bites her lip, about to tell him that she is certain that he is older than her, "I'm good at it, you know. I'll give you some service." His smirk is confident, a fang peeking from the way his lips quirk

"Then," Tomie thinks of Kuro and the days when he comes home angry. She thinks of his almost childlike demeanor: flighty, overconfident, and uncaring of everything around him. Selfish, she criticizes her pet. Selfish, she criticizes herself. She almost forgets how long Kuro has been staying with her but she loses the mood to count. She trusts this urge. (Just like when Kuki killed his mother, like when Hashi crushed his mother's jaw under his hands, bathed in his blood, and felt euphoria so strong that he stopped caring. People always follow their urges no matter what. Tomie and Amida Nyorai, Tomie and the peaches, Tomie and the fireworks from New Year.) "What's Kuro's name?"

(It is a little satisfying, she thinks later on. Zen'in Touji is rarely surprised and she thinks they have more similarities than they do differences. But she does not mind. She barely minds things in his presence. She does not care for anything, struggles to care for things, and even the ashes of her father remains silent in the room a few meters away from them butshe wonders: "What's wrong with just being there?" And his scar stretches, and twists, and he tells her how he got it.)

"I'm—"

2002 年 12 月 22 日
How can I love him?

The end—'But it was more than a breeze: a sense of bliss. Beside himself, he went on pulling, but just as the corners of her mouth began to tear, a shudder ran through his body. He'd heard it: the sound of a heart beating! It seemed to come from far away. Of course! It had to come, the heartbeat, surrounding him, enfolding him at the peak of pleasure, as he put this woman heavy with an unborn child to death. The heartbeat! But... whose? His own? This woman's? Hashi peered deep down into the dark throat in front of him, and somewhere behind the web of veins and sinews, at the deepest place of all, he could just make out a thin, clear membrane covered with white spots. And there, on that tissue, an image began to take shape, something familiar, something he knew long ago: a bird spreading its tail against a background of falling snow—a peacock—the one he had seen from that Christmas Eve when Kiku had shot the woman.' And Kiku realizes, then: "It's you. You're the one who left me in that locker [...] At last! This was the heart! My—" Mother. Fushiguro Tomie becomes a mother at the age of twenty-one and as pain incessant pain continues to throb, the kick of an infant, the gurgle of a cry at the back of her head, and green, green eyes with a scarred tilt, she realizes she is stuck.

Something threatens to burst from inside of her, a burden she had to go through for nine months all because of a love so quick she almost lets it slip from her. (Her heart is too small to love so many people. She only promised to love one. She cannot afford to love anymore than she has to and this burden, this aching thing within her claws on the walls of her insides, and all she gets are the cooing eyes of young women, another palming her stomach as if there sits a blessing that only she does not recognize. Her mother never said anything about this; she never said that it would be this heavy, this painful—no one ever told Tomie that she would find herself stranded in blindingly white rooms for days, a stomach that bursts over the slightest of touch, and nobody told her anything about her being angry.) This is not fair. Nothing about this is fair.

She stays on her back, hands covering her eyes because what if she opens them and sees something she does not like?Tomie, Tomie, Tomie, did Before-Tomie want to become a mother? Because she does not want to become one. She feels grotesque, feels like the skin that stretches across her bones will never return to how it is, that the pain that burns will never disappear, and why did nobody tell her how angry she would feel? That once it is over—once the pain becomes nothing but a throb, once the doctors and the nurses crowd at her, that once the thing is finally in her hands—why did no one tell her about teetering at the edge of life and death, that monsters exist in the midst of sacrifice? "Pretty eyes," is all she says, when the weight in her stomach is transferred in her arms. The baby is heavy. Less heavy than he was when he was in her arms, but still too heavy for her, so heavy that it feels like it is not an infant that is in her arms but the world instead. Who replaced this baby for something heavier? Who said that the weight of life is heavier than a corpse? She remembers it so vividly, her death. The way her body felt as the wind swept her hair from her face and it awfully felt like this one.

She feels empty. "What do we name him?" She finally breathes out, and Tōji, a hulking figure from beside her feels like a frame, a decoration to appease the doctors that surround them. They look at him expectantly. They never decided on a name, she realizes. She hated talking about it and Tōji did not know what to say about it, like they were walking on eggshells and that this baby could disappear any moment if he dared to speak about it.

But his hands reach for the baby so gently, a son that resembles him more than he will ever resemble Tomie. His eyes are green, as green as his father's and all he has from Tomie is... nothing. Nothing. The child looks nothing like her. (Is this even hers? The child looks nothing like her even though it took everything from her.) "Megumi," a blessing. Tomie almost laughs. Blessing? Just like the 'tomi' in her name, the blessings are recycled.

The nurse beams. "Megumi," Tomie ignores the feminine sounding name and the nurse seems pleased as well as she begins to write on her clipboard, "Zen—"

"Fushiguro," Touji corrects before she can even continue, "Fushiguro Megumi."

Tomie. Thirteen strokes for 'blessing' and fifteen strokes for 'fate'. A blessed fate.

Megumi. Ten strokes for 'blessing'. Named after his mother.

2002 年 7 月 18 日
The North Star seemed so far away.

ALL Tomie can see is red. The Tennōsama is an annual festival in Saitama and she only experienced it recently when she became who she is today. Tōji hates it when she goes out, says that the child in her womb will attract Cursed Spirits for a reason she does not know. (Yōkai. He must be talking about those things. Tomie does not know what kind of family Tōji hails from and he does not like talking about it; whenever she brings them up, his jaw tightens, seething, and he grows to despise his eyes. He says that he hopes the child looks like her—her dark eyes, her soft features, none of what makes him him. Zen'in Tōji, he calls himself, but he prefers 'just Tōji'.) The urge to go to the festival is there though and whenever Tomie talks about 'urges' and 'wants', Tōji always gives in. I want so little, Tomie would say, let me have this. He loses his harsh demeanor when faced with the child within her womb.

Tomie is all but dyed in red. Her white clothes only make the red color look deeper, look angrier, look more like a maddening color. "Do you believe in Myōken?" She ignores the man beside him, a familiar presence now—Kong Siwoo bites on his cigarette, his suit clinging to him and almost drenched in the same color as Tomie. The lanterns float, overcrowded and nauseating. This festival is too loud for Tomie but this is the only place she can go without hearing the heartbeat of this burden.

"Myōken," Tomie sighs, "I'm a Buddhist."

"So you do?" Kong's voice can barely be heard in this crowd but Tomie prefers it this way. She closes her eyes. The burden is gone. The weight is gone. It is only her in this maddeningly red lantern festival. (Ah, oh, her father stands at the far corner of her mind. He carries a book—translated, a gift she never finished reading. The year 1995: 'The Coin Locker Babies' by Murakami Ryū is first translated, and it takes another decade for it to be republished.) Tomie shrugs her shoulders.

Four months into pregancy and she cannot get used to it. She wants to release this weight but she cannot. Tōji looks at her differently now. He is gentler, less aggressive, Kong Siwoo standing behind him like someone who finds you suspicious. But there is a child within her and Kong once threw his head back in laughter and said that that child—that child will either become nothing or be everything. Tōji spat at him then. "They won't be able to touch you if you're with us, you know," Kong flips a card to her. His stupid cult. "Hey, hey—before you say anything, I'm obligated to give that to you."

"I don't have any interest to join a cult," Tomie hisses.

Kong drops his cigarette and steps on it with the heel of his shoe. "I don't think anyone does, Fushiguro-san."

• the coin locker babies (コインロッカー・ベイビーズ, koinrokkā beibīzu) is a novel by murakami ryuu. this is about hashi and kiku who were both abandoned by their mothers in coin lockers which is common in japan. the following quotes in this chapter comes from the novel:

  • The woman pushed on the baby's stomach and sucked its penis into her mouth; it was thinner than the American menthols she smoked and a bit slimy, like raw fish. She was testing to see if the baby would cry, but the little arms and legs were still, so she peeled away the plastic wrapping over its face. She lined a cardboard box with towels, laid the baby inside, and taped the box shut. Then she tied it with string and wrote a made-up name and address on the side in big print.

  • But it was more than a breeze: a sense of bliss. Beside himself, he went on pulling, but just as the corners of her mouth began to tear, a shudder ran through his body. He'd heard it: the sound of a heart beating! It seemed to come from far away. Of course! It had to come, the heartbeat, surrounding him, enfolding him at the peak of pleasure, as he put this woman heavy with an unborn child to death. The heartbeat! But... whose? His own? This woman's? Hashi peered deep down into the dark throat in front of him, and somewhere behind the web of veins and sinews, at the deepest place of all, he could just make out a thin, clear membrane covered with white spots. And there, on that tissue, an image began to take shape, something familiar, something he knew long ago: a bird spreading its tail against a background of falling snow—a peacock—the one he had seen from that Christmas Eve when Kiku had shot the woman.

  • It's you. You're the one who left me in that locker [...] At last! This was the heart! My—

• the following is an excerpt from the diving pool:

  • Sometimes I wish I could describe how wonderful I feel in those few seconds from the time he spreads his arms above his head, as if trying to grab hold of something, to the instant he vanishes into the water. But I can never find the right words. Perhaps it's  because he's falling through time, to a place where words can never reach.

• myouken (妙見菩薩, myōken bosatsu) or the sonjō-ō (尊星王, venerable star king) is the personification of the north star in buddhism, in reference to tengen-sama considered as the star of the star religious group. more of this will be expaned throughout the story.

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today, i, too