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purified. As I sat there peering out the window, I saw the
shadow of a person coming up the sidewalk in front of my
house.
I wondered if it was a dream and blinked my eyes. It was
Urara. Dressed in blue, grinning broadly, she looked at me
and came toward me. At the gate she mouthed, "May I
come in?" I nodded. She crossed the yard and reached my
window. I opened it, my heart pounding.
"Sure is cold out," she said. An icy wind came in
through the window, freezing my feverish cheeks. The
pure, clean air tasted delicious.
"What's up?" I asked. I must have been beaming like a
happy little kid.
"I'm on my way home. Your cold is looking worse, you
know. Here, I'll give you some vitamin C candy." Taking
the candy from her pocket, she handed it to me, smiling
artlessly.
"You're always so good to me," I said in a hoarse voice.
"You look like your temperature is very high. You must
feel rotten."
"Yes," I said. "I couldn't go running this morning." For
some reason I felt like crying.
"With a cold" she spoke evenly, lowering her eyes a
litde "now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than
dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might
come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad
as this, but if you just hold steady, it won't be. For the rest
of your life. That's how it works. You could take the
negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it
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won't hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life "
With that she looked up at me, smiling.
I remained silent, my eyes wide. Was she only talking
about having a cold? Just what was she saying? The blue of
the dawn, my fever, everything was spinning, and the
boundary between dream and waking blurred. While her
words were making their way into my heart, I was staring
absently at her bangs, which were fluttering in the wind.
"Well, see you tomorrow." With a smile, Urara gently
shut the window from the outside. She skipped lightly out
the gate.
Floating in a dream, I watched her walk away. That she
had come to me at the end of a long night of misery made
me want to cry tears of joy. I wanted to tell her: "How
happy I am that you came to me like an apparition in that
bluish mist. Now everything around me will be a little bit
better when I wake up." At last I was able to fall asleep.
When I awoke I knew that my cold was at least a little
better. I slept so soundly that it was evening before I woke
up. I got out of bed, took a shower, put on a fresh change
of clothes, started drying my hair. My fever was down and
I felt quite well, except for the sensation of my body having
been through the mill.
I wondered, under the hot wind of the hair dryer, if
Urara had really come to see me. Maybe it was just a
dream her words resounded in my brain as if it had been.
And had she really only been talking about having a cold?
My face in the mirror had a touch of dark shadow on it,
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MOONLIGHT SHADOW
making me wonder was this a harbinger of other terrible
nights to come, like the aftershocks following an earth-
quake? I was so tired that I couldn't bear to think about it.
I was truly exhausted. But still . . . more than anything, I
wanted to evade those thoughts, even if I had to do it on
my hands and knees.
For one thing, I was breathing more easily than I had
been even yesterday. I was sick to death at the prospect of
more suffocatingly lonely nights. The idea that they would
be repeated, that that was just how life was, made me
shudder with horror. Still, having tasted for myself that
moment when I suddenly could breathe easy again made
my heart beat faster.
I found I was able to smile a litde. The knowledge of
how quickly my fever had dissipated made me a litde
giddy. Just then there was an unexpected knock at my
bedroom door. I thought it was my mother and said,
"Come in." When the door opened, I was amazed to see
Hiiragi.
"Your mother says she kept calling you, but you didn't
answer," he said.
"I was drying my hair, I guess I couldn't hear." I was
embarrassed to be caught in the intimacy of my room with
just-washed, unstyled hair, but he said, nonplussed,
"When I phoned, your mother said you had a cold, like a
terrible teething fever, so I thought I'd come and see how
you're doing."
I remembered that he'd been here with Hitoshi, like the
day of the festival and that time after the baseball game. So,
just like old times, he grabbed a cushion and flopped down.
HI
BANANA YOSHIMOTO
It was only I who had forgotten how well we knew each
other.
"I brought you a get-well present." Hiiragi laughed
indicating a large paper bag. At this point I couldn't tell
him I was actually just about over it. I even forced a cough.
He had come all this way because he thought I was sick.
"It's a chicken filet sandwich from Kentucky Fried, which
I know you love, and some sherbet. Cokes, too. And, I
brought enough for myself, so let's eat."
He was treating me like I was made of brittle glass. My
mother must have said something to him. I was embar-
rassed. Still, it wasn't as if I were so much better I could say
flat out, "I'm completely well!"
In the brightly lit room, warmed by my little heater, the
two of us calmly ate what he had brought. The food was
delicious, and I realized how very, very hungry I was. It
occurred to me I always enjoyed what I ate when I was
with him. How wonderful that is, I thought.
"Satsuki."
"What?" In a reverie, realizing he had said my name, I
looked up.
"You've got to stop torturing yourself, all alone, getting
thinner and thinner you even got a fever from it. When
you feel like that, call me up. We'll get together, go do
something. Every time I see you you look more frail, but
you pretend everything's all right. That's a waste of energy.
I know you and Hitoshi were so happy together that now
you could die of sadness. It's only natural."
He had never said anything like that. It was odd that
was the first time I had seen him express such emotion:
MOONLIGHT SHADOW
sympathy as open and unguarded as a child's. Because I had
thought his style too cool for that, it was totally unex-
pected, this purehearted concern. But then I remembered
Hitoshi saying how Hiiragi, usually old beyond his years,
reverted to a childlike state where the family was con-
cerned. I had to smile I felt I understood now what
Hitoshi had meant.
"I know I'm still a kid, and when I take off the sailor
outfit I feel so alone I could cry, but we're all brothers and
sisters when we're in trouble, aren't we? I care about you
so much, I just want to crawl into the same bed with you."
He said it with such an utterly sincere face, and it was so
obvious his intentions were honorable, I had to smile in
spite of myself. Then I said to him, deeply moved, "I'll do
as you say. I really will, I'll call you, I mean it. Thank you.
Really, truly, thank you."
After Hiiragi left I went back to sleep. Thanks to the
cold medicine I took, I slept through a long, peaceful,
dreamless night. It was the divine, anticipatory sleep I
remember having slept as a child on Christmas Eve. When
I awoke, I would go to Urara waiting at the river, and I
would see the "something."
It was before dawn. Although my health was not quite
back to normal, I got dressed and went running. It was the
kind of frozen morning in which moon shadows seem to
be pasted on the sky. The sound of my footsteps resonated
in the silent blue air and faded away into the emptiness of
the streets.
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BANANA yos hi mot o
" " "
Urara was standing by the bridge. When I got there her
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