Espresso Love (A Dystopian Japan Novel) #Wattys2014

The Lost, The Found

I thank her and make my way behind the shelf. I make sure I can't see her from my position, so that neither could she see me. The library isn't very large, no more than two or three classrooms conjoined with makeshift rows of books in between. There are two rectangular wooden tables at the front of the library where I had entered. Call numbers and categories are printed out on sheets of paper and adhered to the sides of shelves. Books here are still old-fashioned and don't have barcode stickers on them; instead, it would be manually inputted into the computer system when a student checks out items. The light flickers over my head. The remaining bulb only provides a weak ambience like a waning life force uttering last words. Shirayuki is thumbing through manga, apparently not very interested in what I am doing.

I find the yearbooks with ease. There's an entire row of them - thin maroon-coloured hardcover books: the lengthy history of the school had left behind a legacy of decaying pages and old faded pictures. In a way, I am reluctant to pry beneath the covers. Somewhere within are faces and memories I could not recall at the moment and might not ever want to recall. If I see them, I am worried something monstrous would creep up from within, like whatever is struggling to break free in my dreams from some dark wet place.

I pick up the 2007 yearbook. The 2008 issue wouldn't have Sato in it. She would've been dead. So would Nobu. They would simply disappear from the roster, a death certificate attached to the family register as if it's something to be proud of; aside from that, there may no longer be any record of their lives left. Just like the Images. Regardless of how or when, each is due to blink out of existence, one after another. A pending judgement, written in a schedule somewhere. Remaining students would have their memories siphoned over time, like mine had been and all traces would be gone. No one would remember them. If somehow their files and pictures are destroyed, if the System should erase them, then they would never have existed at all.

With unsteady hands, I manage to open the book. Some of the pages are sticking together like someone had spilt something on it. But in general it's still in good condition. The glossy pages are high quality prints, and wouldn't yellow or wear easily. The pictures are pretty crisp; for the lower resolution standards back then, it isn't bad at all. I look for the year two classes. Omura in the article would be teaching seventeen year-old third year students in 2008. The Sato I am looking for should only be sixteen. I see a few teachers and classes I recognize, having had them at some point for various subjects. I pause. But don't feel anything stirring within me. No flood of memories; no secretive breezes from uncharted gardens or hidden backroom caskets. I feel nothing and remember nothing other than an ambiguous familiarity. I must have known them but I look in as if I am peering through a dusty windowpane from the outside of someone else's house. I can't see the interior very well.

I finally come across class 2-D which is taught by someone called Inoue. A man with a moustache and goatee, whom I don't recognize. There's a class picture. It's neat and orderly, and the students look exceptionally mature and full of pride. They sit straight, hands on their laps. Their faces are too small to make out details however; I can't recognize the difference between some of the girls. So I move on to the individual shots which are all about the height of a large thumb. Each face is captured formally on a blue velvety background and their names are displayed underneath in full.

I had always been unenthusiastic about taking formal pictures: I was not photogenic in them. None of my identification documents presented an accurate image of myself. I wonder if it's the same with the students. Surely, they are not candid photos that capture a moment in time. There's no memory here. These are cold, stiff, merciless shots that attempt to manufacture identities and personas. Their ages, gender, outdated hairstyles, progress in puberty, maybe social standing, are permanently printed, a frozen artifact, until the page withers into ashes.

About the third row down, near the right, I find what I have been looking for. It takes a while for it to register.

It's no doubt Kozue Sato. A girl with black hair not so different than Shirayuki, bangs hanging past her eyebrows, glasses perched neatly on her nose. Her eyes seem to contain a faint glimmer of something. It isn't like Shizuka's intensity and depth, but it's a soft texture of melancholy. She smiles at me but it looks unnatural. As if someone is taking hold of her cheeks to make an attempt.

"Is that me?"

Shirayuki peers over my shoulder. "She's cute isn't she, this Kozue Sato."

I say nothing in reply. It's clearly the same person. Why have you come, Kozue Sato? I want to ask. But of course the librarian would hear.

Something falls out from the yearbook. A small sheet of folded white paper. I pick it up. There's nothing on it but a tiny hastily scrawled message. It's handwritten in purple ink, round and unmistakably female, but the proportions are skewed as if it were written on someone's lap or the back of a tree.

Sometimes, time flies by too quickly, it reads. No matter how hard it has been, I still remember when you spoke to me for the first time in the library. It was mid-summer. You said I looked down and needed something to read and handed me an old dusty book. That it might help. Somehow it was something that cheered me up. Reaching the edge of the world and then returning to a fresh new start. To know there's someone like that who felt the need to run away from home and get away from it all. A mystical stone which may open the way at a pivotal point of time. But instead of running away, the real paramount principle was the change from within. Even if it's fiction, that's really precious you know? There is just a little hope out there, fiction or not, that someone else shares the pain you feel. That the pain can go away, if you change yourself. Life isn't easy I know, you taught me that. But thank you for being so nice to me all the time. You cheered me up a lot this year; I don't know how to repay you. It's hard for you and for me but I'll try my best! I trust that you will as well. I'll be in senior high next year, so please take care of me then as well. Show me more American music sometime.

Signed underneath is a date and a name I recognize. Shizuka Kaneko, February 2007.