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We cut across the meadow, through a stand of trees, and across another meadow. Naoko talked about her dead sister, explaining that although she had hardly said anything about this to anyone, she felt she ought to tell me.
“She was six years older than me, and our personalities were totally different, but still we were very close. We never fought, not once. It’s true. Of course, with such a big difference in our ages, there was nothing much for us to fight about.”
Her sister was one of those girls who are successful at everything - a super-student, a super-athlete, popular, a leader, kind, straightforward, the boys liked her, her teachers loved her, her walls were covered with certificates of merit. There’s always one girl like that in any school. “I’m not saying this because she’s my sister, but she never let any of this spoil her or make her the least bit stuck-up or a show-off. It’s just that, no matter what you gave her to do, she would naturally do it better than anyone else.
"So when I was little, I decided that I was going to be the sweet little girl.” Naoko twirled a frond of plume grass as she spoke. “I mean, you know, I grew up hearing everybody talking about how smart she was and how good she was at games and how popular she was. Of course I’m going to assume there’s no way I could ever compete with her. My face, at least, was a little prettier than hers, so I guess my parents decided they’d bring me up cute. Right from the start they put me in that kind of school. They dressed me in velvet dresses and frilly blouses and patent leather shoes and gave me piano lessons and ballet lessons. This just made my sister even crazier about me - you know: I was her cute little sister. She’d give me these cute little presents and take me everywhere with her and help me with my homework. She even took me along on dates. She was the best big sister anyone could ask for.
"Nobody knew why she killed herself. The same as Kizuki. Exactly the same. She was 17, too, and she never gave the slightest hint she was going to commit suicide. She didn’t leave a note, either. Really, it was exactly the same, don’t you think?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Everybody said she was too smart or she read too many books. And she did read a lot. She had tons of books. I read a bunch of them after she died, and it was so sad. They had her comments in the margins and flowers pressed between the pages and letters from boyfriends, and every time I came across something like that I’d cry. I cried a lot.” Naoko fell silent for a few seconds, twirling the plume grass again.
“She was the kind of person who took care of things by herself. She’d never ask anybody for advice or help. It wasn’t a matter of pride, I think. She just did what seemed natural to her. My parents were used to this and thought she’d be OK if they left her alone. I would go to my sister for advice and she was always ready to give it, but she never went to anyone else. She did what needed to be done, on her own. She never got angry or moody. This is all true, I mean it, I’m not exaggerating. Most girls, when they have their period or something, will get grumpy and take it out on others, but she never even did that. Instead of getting into a bad mood, she would become very subdued. Maybe once in two or three months this would happen to her: she’d shut herself up in her room and stay in bed, avoid school, hardly eat a thing, turn the lights off, and space out. She wouldn’t be in a bad mood, though. When I came home from school, she’d call me into her room and sit me down next to her and ask me about my day. I’d tell her all the little things - like what kinds of games I played with my friends or what the teacher said or my exam results, stuff like that. She’d take in every detail and make comments and suggestions, but as soon as I left - to play with a friend, say, or go to a ballet lesson - she’d space out again. After two days, she’d snap out of it just like that and go to school. This kind of thing went on for, I don’t know, maybe four years. My parents were worried at first and I think they went to a doctor for advice, but, I mean, she’d be perfectly fine after two days, so they thought it would work itself out if they left her alone, she was such a bright, steady girl.
"After she died, though, I heard my parents talking about a younger brother of my father’s who had died long before. He had also been very bright, but he had stayed shut up in the house for four years - from the time he was 17 until he was 21. And then suddenly one day he left the house and jumped in front of a train. My father said, "Maybe it’s in the blood - from my side’.”
While Naoko was speaking, her fingers unconsciously teased the tassel of the plume grass, scattering its fibres to the wind. When the shaft was bare, she wound it around her fingers.
“I was the one who found my sister dead,” she went on. “In autumn when I was in the first year. November. On a dark, rainy day. My sister was in the sixth-form at the time. I came home from my piano lesson at 6:30 and my mother was making dinner. She told me to tell my sister it was ready. I went upstairs and knocked on her door and yelled ‘Dinner’s ready’, but there was no answer. Her room was completely silent. I thought this was strange, so I knocked again, opened the door and peeped inside. I thought she was probably sleeping. She wasn’t in bed, though. She was standing by the window, staring outside, with her neck bent at a kind of angle like this, like she was thinking. The room was dark, the lights were out, and it was hard to see anything. 'What are you doing?’ I said to her. 'Dinner is ready.’ That’s when I noticed that she looked taller than usual. What was going on? I wondered: it was so strange! Did she have high heels on? Was she standing on something? I moved closer and was just about to speak to her again when I saw it: there was a rope above her head. It came straight down from a beam in the ceiling - I mean it was amazingly straight, like somebody had drawn a line in space with a ruler. My sister had a white blouse on - yeah, a simple white blouse like this one - and a grey skirt, and her toes were pointing down like a ballerina’s, except there was a space between the tip of her toes and the floor of maybe seven or eight inches. I took in every detail. Her face, too. I looked at her face. I couldn’t help it. I thought: I’ve got to go right downstairs and tell my mother. I’ve got to scream. But my body ignored me. It moved on its own, separately from my conscious mind. It was trying to lower her from the rope while my mind was telling me to hurry downstairs. Of course, there was no way a little girl could have the strength to do such a thing, and so I just stood there, spacing out, for maybe five or six minutes, a total blank, like something inside me had died. I just stayed that way, with my sister, in that cold, dark place until my mother came up to see what was going on.”
Naoko shook her head.
“For three days after that I couldn’t talk. I just lay in bed like a dead person, eyes wide open and staring into space. I didn’t know what was happening.” Naoko pressed against my arm. “I told you in my letter, didn’t I? I’m a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And that’s why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don’t wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don’t let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don’t want to do. I don’t want to interfere with your life. I don’t want to interfere with anybody’s life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That’s all I want.”
“It’s not all I want, though,” I said.
“You’re wasting your life being involved with me.”
“I’m not wasting anything.”
“But I might never recover. Will you wait for me forever? Can you wait 10 years, 20 years?”
“You’re letting yourself be scared by too many things,” I said. “The dark, bad dreams, the power of the dead. You have to forget them. I’m sure you’ll get well if you do.”
“If I can,” said Naoko, shaking her head.
“If you can get out of this place, will you live with me?” I asked. “Then I can protect you from the dark and from bad dreams. Then you’d have me instead of Reiko to hold you when things got difficult.”
Naoko pressed still more firmly against me. “That would be wonderful,” she said.