Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [75]
“Dad?”
Akira Mitani, expecting a phone call about a lost article from some loud bar, paused. Wataru listened intently to the silence.
“It’s me. Wataru.”
No answer.
“I-I’m sorry to call you at work. I didn’t know your cell phone number, and Mom wouldn’t tell me. I just…I just wanted to talk to you.”
Katchan is staring at me. He’s tugging at his ear, nervous, like he knows he shouldn’t be watching but he can’t help it. He’s worried.
“Dad…”
“This…isn’t the best place for me to talk.”
“What should I do?”
There was a pause. The office where Akira worked must be very quiet. Wataru couldn’t hear a sound.
“You don’t have anything at school this Saturday, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Then how about we meet, just you and me?”
Wataru’s heart lurched back into motion, blood surging through tingling limbs with dizzying speed.
“Okay.”
“Someplace close by is good. Remember that city library we went to, what was it, last year?”
The library was about an eight-minute bus ride away from home. Wataru’s home.
“Yeah.”
“How about there, in front of the checkout counter? Noon.”
“Exactly noon? You mean, like twelve o’clock? Okay, that should be fine.”
Akira told him his cell phone number. Wataru hastily copied it down and memorized it. It was like he had received the secret number to a padlocked cage. But what’s inside?
“Wataru…”
“Yeah, what?”
“I don’t want you to be angry with me, but, when we meet, I’d like it to be just the two of us. You see…”
“No problem,” Wataru cut him off. “I won’t tell Mom. I wanted to talk to you alone too.”
Akira said goodbye. Wataru thanked him, and held the phone to his ear until he heard the click.
“So you gonna meet him?” Katchan asked, leaning forward.
“Yeah, on Saturday.”
Wataru’s voice sounded strained and thin. For the first time, he realized he was on the verge of crying.
“Alone? What about your mom?”
“It’s just me this time. I promised.”
“Whoa,” Katchan said seriously. “I guess that’s how it’s got to go down. But hey, great! You two can talk all you want, and you can get him to answer all your questions. Who knows, sounds like it’ll probably be good.”
“Thanks, Katchan.”
“Not at all, man.” Katchan grinned. “You just come to me when you need to make things happen. Chop chop.”
Wataru was on pins and needles the whole week. Every day things flustered him to the point that his mother started asking him what was wrong, and of course he had no answer. He had even begun to worry that he might say something in his sleep and blow the whole thing.
On Saturday morning, he woke up at five o’clock. Later, when he went out, he told his mother that he was going to the library. Kuniko, not suspecting a thing, gave him ¥500 for the bus trip and some lunch. The bright morning sun shone harshly on her face as she waved goodbye. She looked older than Wataru had ever seen her before.
A washed and wrinkled curtain hung out to dry.
He arrived a full two hours early, so he walked through the open stacks, picking up books on a whim and leafing through the pages. Nothing he read stuck for longer than a passing moment; the rows of text flowed in and out of his head like water from a faucet.
Akira arrived right on time. On this day he was wearing a dark green polo shirt and white pants. His sneakers were sparkling-white new. Wataru had never seen any of these clothes before. He saw too that his father was wearing rimless glasses with small lenses. Wataru knew he was a bit nearsighted, but he’d never seen him wearing designer glasses before.
They looked good on him.
“What, you’re already here? Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
He seemed relaxed, quiet, no different from the father Wataru had always known. Gone without a trace were the poorly shaven face, the husky voice, the slumped shoulders of the night he had left.
It was amazing that it had already been two weeks since then. Wataru looked up at him, trying to put his thoughts into words and failing miserably.
His father had lost