Lonely Castle in the Mirror Read online

  Kokoro hadn’t expected them to let her get away with it, and it left her confused. She’d always believed she had to do what her teachers, her parents and other adults told her, but how they readily assented to her now made her finally understand: this was a real emergency.

  Everyone’s walking on eggshells because of me, she thought.

  Occasionally her classmates from elementary school, Satsuki-chan and Sumida-san, would also come by to see how she was doing. They had moved into different classes now, and maybe their teacher had asked them to visit. But Kokoro felt embarrassed about skipping school, and she refused to see these long-time friends when they stopped by.

  She really did want to see them—she felt there was so much she wanted to say—but making them feel obliged to come over made her uncomfortable, and that’s how it turned out.

  While she was eating the bento, the phone rang. Just as she was wondering whether to get it, it clicked on to the answering machine.

  “Hello? Kokoro? If you’re there, will you pick up?”

  Her mother’s voice. Kind and calm. Kokoro hurriedly picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Kokoro? It’s me.”

  Her voice was gentle now, not like this morning. She heard her mother laugh. Where was she? It sounded quiet around her, so maybe she’d stepped out of the office.

  “You made me worried when you didn’t answer. Are you all right? Are you eating the bento? How’s your stomach?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Really? I was thinking that if you were still feeling ill, maybe you should go and see the doctor.”

  “I’m OK.”

  “I’ll come home early today. It’s going to be all right, Kokoro. We’re just learning how to deal with this, so let’s do our best to work through it, OK?”

  Her mother sounded so cheerful, but all Kokoro could manage was a muttered “Sure” in response.

  Her mother had been so cross this morning. So what had happened since? Maybe she’d got advice on the situation from one of her colleagues at work? Or perhaps she was having her own second thoughts about her earlier outburst and thought she’d call.

  Do our best. Kokoro had no idea if she could live up to her mum’s expectations, but she went ahead and agreed with her anyway.

  It was after four now, and she couldn’t stay downstairs.

  The curtains in her room upstairs were, as in the morning, still closed.

  As she waited to hear the now-familiar sound, she began to tense up. She could never get used to it. She tried watching the TV, with the sound turned down, to take her mind off it, but nevertheless she sat on her bed, anxiously waiting.

  Any minute now.

  There it was. She heard the mailbox in front of their house swing shut with a clang as someone dropped a letter inside.

  “Ah—Tojo-san’s here,” she said to herself.

  Moé Tojo-san, a girl from her class.

  Tojo-san was a transfer student who’d joined their class at the end of April, after the semester had already begun. She’d arrived late due to some formalities to do with her father’s job, apparently.

  She was a pretty girl, good at sports too, and her desk in class was right next to Kokoro’s. Moé’s athletic build and long lashes took Kokoro’s breath away—she reminded her of one of those beautiful French dolls people used to collect. Tojo-san didn’t have any foreign blood, apparently, though she did have the attractive features often found among Eurasians.

  The teacher assigned her to sit next to Kokoro for a reason—they were neighbors, with Tojo-san’s house only two doors down from Kokoro’s. His aim was that, as neighbors, they should get to know each other, and Kokoro hoped they would. And in fact, in the first two weeks after she began school, Tojo-san asked Kokoro if she could address her by the informal Kokoro-chan. They also walked to school and back home together.

  Tojo-san had even invited Kokoro to come over to her house.

  Her home had the same basic floorplan as Kokoro’s, though she got the impression it had been designed with Tojo-san’s family specifically in mind. The building materials were the same, as was the height of the ceilings, yet the ornaments on display in the hall, the pictures hanging on the wall, the light fixtures and color of the carpeting were all different. The identical construction and layout made these differences stand out all the more.

  Tojo-san’s home was so smart and stylish, with paintings just inside the entrance based on the fairy tales her father was apparently fascinated by.

  Tojo-san’s father was a college professor researching children’s literature. On the wall, he had framed line-drawings from old illustrated books he’d picked up while in Europe. Scenes from stories Kokoro was familiar with: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, Hansel and Gretel.

  “Pretty weird scenes, aren’t they?” Tojo-san said. By this time Kokoro was addressing her, too, more familiarly, as Moé-chan.

  “Papa collects drawings by this artist, including their illustrations for the Brothers Grimm books and illustrations from the Hans Christian Andersen stories.”

  The scenes didn’t strike Kokoro as weird, exactly. The one from The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats was the well-known episode where the wolf breaks into the young goats’ house and they scramble to escape. The drawing from Hansel and Gretel, too, was one of the more famous ones, where Hansel is walking in the forest, tossing out breadcrumbs. There was a witch in the picture, but that alone told you which story it was from.

  Their houses were the same size inside, but for some reason Tojo-san’s house seemed much more spacious.

  In the living room were shelves lined with books in English, German and other languages.

  Tojo-san took one out. “This one’s in Danish,” she said.

  “Wow,” said Kokoro. She could understand a bit of English, but Danish was totally alien.

  “Andersen was a Danish writer,” Tojo-san explained bashfully. “I can’t read it either. But you can borrow it if you’re interested.”

  Kokoro was thrilled. She might not be able to read Danish, but from the illustration on the cover she knew it had to be The Ugly Duckling.

  “And there are lots of books in German, too,” Tojo-san said. “The Brothers Grimm being German and all.”

  This made Kokoro even more excited. She knew many of the Grimms’ fairy tales, and these foreign picture books seemed so stylish and cool.

  “You should come over to my house next time,” Kokoro said. “We don’t have anything nice like these, though . . .” Kokoro really thought it would happen. At least she thought it should.

  So why did things turn out the way they did?

  Tojo-san ended up turning her back on Kokoro.

  Kokoro quickly worked out that Sanada and her little cohort had said something to Tojo-san about her.

  One day in class, Kokoro went over to her. “Moé-chan?” she said, and Tojo-san looked up, obviously annoyed. What do you want? her expression said.

  It was clear Tojo-san found Kokoro a nuisance. She no longer wanted to be in Kokoro’s company, especially not in front of Sanada and her gang.

  Tojo-san and Kokoro had been discussing which after-school club to join. But when the time came to meet, as they’d promised each other, Tojo-san strode right out of the classroom with Sanada and her crew. When they were out in the hallway Sanada said, loudly enough for Kokoro to hear, “I feel so sorry for those loners!”

  As she slowly packed away her schoolbooks, ready to go home, she noticed the stares from the other kids, and Kokoro finally understood: the comment had been meant for her.

  Loner, loner—the word whirled around in her head as she left the school building. She intentionally avoided the other kids’ eyes. If that gang was going to be there, it was enough reason for her to lose all desire to check out any clubs.

  Why did they pick on me like that? she wondered.

  They gave her the silent treatment.

&n
bsp; They whispered about her behind her back.

  They told other girls not to have anything to do with her.

  They laughed.

  Laughed and laughed.

  Laughing at her, Kokoro.

  Her stomach ached and she locked herself in one of the toilet cubicles. She could hear Sanada giggling just outside. Break was nearly over, but she couldn’t leave while they were outside. She was on the verge of tears, but steeled herself anyway, and emerged only to hear a little exclamation from the adjacent cubicle, as Sanada was coming out. She looked directly at Kokoro and grinned.

  When she later heard from a classmate what she’d done, Kokoro blushed with shame. Wondering why Kokoro was taking so long, Sanada had crouched down in the adjacent cubicle and was watching her from below. When she pictured the scene that Sanada must have witnessed—her squatting there, underpants around her ankles—Kokoro thought she felt something collapse inside her.

  The classmate who’d informed her, while lamenting how horrible it all was, also made Kokoro promise never to reveal that she’d been the one who told.

  Kokoro stood there, frozen, dazed, totally crushed.

  She had nowhere left to go where she could feel at peace.

  This happened again and again—until the incident took place, and Kokoro made the fateful decision.

  She stopped going to school.

  Even after Kokoro had dropped out, Tojo-san would stop by to deliver leaflets and notices from school.

  She did it very matter-of-factly.

  Kokoro had hoped they would still be friends, but Tojo-san merely placed the papers in her mailbox and never once rang the doorbell. Kokoro had witnessed this any number of times from her upstairs window; Tojo-san dumping the leaflets, as if fulfilling a duty, then hurrying off.

  Now she watched idly as the figure in school uniform, a shirt with a blue-green collar and a dark red scarf, appeared. The same uniform she herself had worn in April.

  Kokoro felt relieved at least that Tojo-san came by alone on her errand, probably because the other girls lived elsewhere.

  Her teacher had probably told Tojo-san to stop by and see Kokoro, and Kokoro decided not to think about the possibility that Tojo-san was intentionally ignoring these instructions.

  The mailbox clanged shut and Moé-chan left.

  There was a full-length mirror in Kokoro’s room.

  She had got her parents to put it up as soon as she had chosen her room—an oval-shaped mirror with a pink stone frame. When she looked at herself in it now, she looked sickly, and she felt like crying. She couldn’t stand to look at it anymore.

  She quietly lifted a corner of the curtain to make sure that Tojo-san had left, then collapsed in slow motion back on her bed. With the sound down, the glow from the TV struck her as overpoweringly bright.

  She thought about how, now that she’d stopped going to school, her father had taken away her video game console.

  “If she doesn’t go to school but still has video games, she’ll never do any studying,” he’d said to her mother. It looked like the next step was to take away her TV as well, but her mother had cut him short.

  “Let’s just wait and see,” was her verdict.

  At that moment, Kokoro had hated him, but now she wasn’t so sure. She had the feeling he might be right—that if she did have video games to hand, that would be all she did all day. She certainly wasn’t doing any studying at this point.

  Keeping up with schoolwork in this new school—junior high—wasn’t going to be easy. She felt lost, not knowing what to do.

  The glow in her room was becoming really bright.

  She casually raised her head from her pillow, thinking she should switch off the TV, and gasped.

  The TV was not on.

  She must have turned it off without realizing.

  The light was coming from the full-length mirror near the door.

  “What the—?”

  She got off her bed and walked over to it without really thinking. Light seemed to be radiating from inside the mirror; it had become so blinding she could barely look.

  She reached out a hand to touch it.

  She realized a beat later that it might be hot, but the surface was still cool to the touch. With a flat palm, she pushed a little harder.

  “Oh my god!” she screamed to herself.

  Her palm was being sucked right into the mirror. The surface was soft, as if she were pushing against water. She was being dragged to the other side of the mirror.

  In an instant, her body had been swallowed up into the light and was moving through a tunnel of chilled air. She tried calling her mother, but no voice emerged.

  She was being dragged somewhere far away. Up or straight ahead, she couldn’t tell.

  “Hey you, wake up!”

  The first sensation was of a cold floor beneath her cheek.

  She had a splitting headache, and her mouth and throat were parched. Kokoro heard the voice again, but couldn’t lift her head.

  “Come on, wake up.”

  A girl’s voice, a girl from the lower grades of elementary school by the sound of it.

  Kokoro didn’t know anyone that age. She shook her head, blinked, and sat up. She turned to look in the direction of the voice and gasped.

  A weird-looking child was standing there, hand on hip.

  “Are you awake now? Kokoro Anzai-chan?”

  She was looking at the face of—a wolf.

  The girl was wearing the sort of wolf mask usually found at temple festivals.

  She was wearing an outfit that clashed with the wolf mask—a pink, lace-trimmed dress, the kind a girl would wear to her own piano recital, or to a wedding. She was like a live version of a Rika-chan doll.

  And she—knows my name.

  Kokoro’s eyes darted around.

  Where am I?

  The shining emerald floor reminded her of something from The Wizard of Oz.

  She felt perhaps she was in an anime, or in a stage play. Then she noticed a dark shape looming over her. She looked up and took a huge, deep breath. Her hand flew to her mouth.

  She seemed to be in some sort of castle. A castle from a Western fairy tale, with a magnificent gate.

  “Congratulaaations!” a voice sang. Behind the mask, Kokoro couldn’t read the little girl’s expression, or see her lips move.

  “Kokoro Anzai-san, you have the honor of being a guest in this castle!” She spread her arms out wide and spun around.

  The magnificent iron gate began to creak open.

  Kokoro’s mind went blank with fear. She had to get out.

  The wolf girl continued to gaze at her, inscrutably. Kokoro hoped that, if this was some sort of dream, then the next time she looked, the girl would have vanished.

  Something caught the edge of her vision. Kokoro slowly turned around: a mirror on the wall was shining.

  Not the same oval-shaped mirror as the one in her bedroom, though it seemed a similar size. Its frame was ringed with multi-colored, teardrop-shaped stones. Kokoro scampered towards it. This mirror must surely connect up with her room, and if only she could pass through it, she might be able to go back.

  Kokoro suddenly felt the weight of the little wolf girl clinging to her back, tackling her from behind with her spindly limbs. The force of her charge sent Kokoro tumbling face first back on to the emerald-colored floor.

  “Don’t you dare run away!” the little girl shrieked in her ear. “I’ve been interviewing six others all day, and you’re the last. It’s already four o’clock and I’m nearly out of time!”

  “I really don’t care!” Kokoro found her voice.

  She was sure she sounded extremely harsh to this girl, so much younger than her, but Kokoro was feeling panicked.

  Lying on the floor, she tried to pry the clinging girl off her back. She twisted her head sideways for another look at her surroundings.

  It was like a Disney Cinderella castle, ripped from some fantasy.

  This has got to be a
dream, she thought. But the girl now pinning her to the floor with her legs around her waist had tangible weight and substance.

  She continued crawling towards the shining mirror, when she felt the little wolf girl begin to pound her with her fists.

  “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to know where you are? You could be on the brink of an adventure, and you’re telling me you really don’t care? Use your imagination for once in your life!”

  “I will not!” Kokoro shouted back, nearly in tears. In her head she was thinking she could still get back. Pretend it never happened.

  But she was becoming more certain: this was no dream.

  The girl tightened her grip around Kokoro’s waist, squeezing her sides so hard Kokoro could hardly breathe.

  “As I was saying—we’ll grant you a single wish. It will come true, even for a dullard like you. So listen to me!”

  As I was saying, the girl had said, but this was the first time Kokoro had heard anything about a wish. She was too out of breath to respond. She tried as hard as she could to shake her off, shoving the wolf girl’s snout away from her shoulder, where it was rubbing on her neck. Visible above the mask, the girl’s hair was so soft, the head Kokoro had pushed against so tiny, it surprised Kokoro how much it really did feel like a very small child. Nevertheless, she gritted her teeth and shook her sideways to the floor.

  She crawled further, then struggled to her feet, and reached out to touch the shining mirror. Within seconds, her hand was being sucked into the surface, as if passing through water.

  “Wait!” a voice shouted, and she held her breath. Shutting her eyes, she pushed against the mirror with her whole body, and leapt into the light.

  “Hey! You’d better come back tomorrow!”

  She was assailed by a deafening, blurry noise. Then it faded away.

  She blinked several times, and found herself on the floor back in her room. The TV, her bed, the stuffed animals lined up along the window, the bookshelf, desk, chair, dressing table with hairbrush, clips, comb. Everything was in place.