“Suzume amazing!” a childish voice says nearby.

  “Huh?”

  I glance reflexively toward it. A short distance away in the dim schoolyard, I make out a small white form. Its round yellow eyes are looking at me. Slowly swishing its long tail, the white kitten opens its mouth.

  “More Gates will open,” it says.

  “The Keystone!”

  Souta lunges toward it, but Daijin has already vanished into the darkness.

  “…Did the cat open that door?” I whisper with a shaky breath. Souta keeps staring into the darkness after it.

  Thanks to You, I’m a Magician

  “—You’re in Ehime?”

  I can hear Tamaki’s shock over the phone.

  “Wait just a second now, Suzume!”

  Behind her disbelieving voice, I can faintly hear other phones ringing and low voices talking. It’s almost nine at night, but Tamaki is still at the fishing cooperative office.

  “But you told me you were staying at Aya’s house last night!”

  “Um, well, I suddenly had the idea to go on a little trip…,” I say as cheerfully as I can, adding a laugh at the end.

  “How can you laugh about this?!” she snaps. I can see her in my mind’s eye. She’s in that retro cooperative building I visited once on a school trip, sitting at her gray desk, holding the phone and frowning anxiously.

  “You’ll come back tomorrow, won’t you? Where are you staying tonight?”

  “Don’t worry—I have enough savings to pay for a room!”

  “That’s not what I’m asking!”

  In the background, I hear someone say, “Minoru, we’re going drinking.” “You go ahead. I’m going to invite Tamaki.” I imagine Minoru, too. The men from the fishing cooperative are watching Tamaki get mad and making stupid jokes about how I’m in my rebellious phase.

  “The point is, I need you to tell me where you’re staying tonight. A hotel? An inn? You’re really alone, right? You’re not with someone I don’t know?”

  Click. I reflexively hang up. Oh, I can just see it. She’s looking at the picture of me as a little girl that she keeps on her desk and sighing. I heave a dramatic sigh myself. If I leave things like this, worst case scenario, she might call the police. Why, oh why didn’t I come up with a better alibi yesterday? Who put things off and left me in this position? Past me, of course. Now, now, supporting the mental health of your caregiver is a child’s duty, I tell myself as I type out a message in LINE.

  “Sorry for hanging up on you!” Send.

  “I’m doing great!” Send.

  “I’ll be home soon!” Send.

  “Don’t worry about me!” Send.

  Cute sticker of a cat bowing its head in apology. Send.

  Bam, bam, bam. Five “message read” notifications appear. The speed of her response weighs on me. I heave another tired sigh.

  Knock, knock! Without warning, someone bangs on the door right next to me.

  “Yes?” I stand up straight and open the door.

  “Dinner is served!” says Chika. She’s dressed in her inn uniform as she hands me my tray of food with a smile.

  When I emerged from the blockaded road covered in mud and carrying the kiddie chair, Chika was kind enough not to ask too many questions. She did ask if I had a place to stay that night. When I answered honestly that I was looking for one, she smiled and said, “This is your lucky day! My family runs an inn. You must have been destined stay with us tonight!”

  As she sped down the road, she scolded me to hold on tighter, not even caring if I got mud all over her school tracksuit. I clung tight and stared at the back of her neck, suddenly realizing how scared she must have been waiting alone on that dark road. I apologized about ten times.

  She also granted my most ardent wish—to finally take a bath. I scrubbed off all the mud and sweat and whatever else was stuck to me in the inn’s roomy shared bathing area, then submerged myself in the deep, hot water. As predicted, several patches of skin were not happy. I was beyond the point of knowing whether they were sunburns or scrapes. I washed my uniform in a corner, put on the crisp, pale-pink yukata Chika was kind enough to lend me, and went to the room she had set up for me. Now she was bringing me my dinner on a tray.

  “Oh, wow, thank you!” I say, my eyes growing hot behind the lids. At the same moment, I realize I’m so hungry it hurts.

  “Do you mind if I eat here with you?” Chika asks.

  “Oh, no, of course not!” I say, overjoyed. But… “Only, sorry, can you wait just one second?”

  I shut the door, cross the little entryway with a sink in a single step, and open the noisy sliding door to the main room. Souta, who’s standing in the middle of the room, looks up at me.

  “What should I do?” I ask him.

  “You two eat together,” he says. I can hear the smile in his voice. “It seems I don’t get hungry in this body.”

  He walks over to a corner of the large room and turns toward the wall.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Reassured by his cheerful tone, I tell Chika to come in.

  Chika tells me that the huge fish practically falling off the sides of our plates is salt-grilled largehead hairtail. The skin makes an appetizing crackle when I break it open with my chopsticks, while steam rose from the fluffy white flesh. I take a big piece and set it on my rice bowl, then carry it to my mouth with some of the rice.

  “This is so good…!” I say despite myself. It is really, truly delicious. As the light, sweet flavor of the fat spreads through my mouth, I can tell my whole body is rejoicing. Before I realize what’s happening, something hot is spilling from my eyes.

  “Suzume, are you crying?!”

  “It’s just so delicious…”

  Chika laughs happily. We push our trays together and sit across from each other as we eat.

  “You really must have been hungry,” Chika says, sounding impressed. “We had some unexpected guests tonight, so it took me longer than usual to bring up dinner. I’m sorry!”

  “What?! No, please don’t apologize!” I say, suddenly polite in the face of her unbelievable hospitality. “I’m the one who should apologize. Not only am I taking up a room, you even let me use the bath, gave me a yukata, and fed me!”

  “It’s nothing, honestly. This is what my family does for a living.”

  She explains that the inn is a family business, and while they have hired help now and then, it’s basically run by her, her parents, and her kid brother, who’s still in elementary school. On days like today when there are lots of guests, Chika puts on a uniform and helps serve. By this time of night, just before ten, the dinner service is almost done, and she can finally take a break.

  The sashimi is yellowtail, and the side dish is simmered taro root. The light miso soup full of vegetables has a delicate flavor, different from what I’m used to. I tell her I’ve never tasted anything like it, and she says it’s because they use barley miso. I finally feel like I’m in a different part of Japan.

  My phone dings.

  “Ah!” I blurt out as I check the sender.

  “Who’s it from?”

  “My aunt. Sorry, I need to read this.”

  I open the message. Ugh. It’s so long it fills the whole screen.

  “Suzume, I don’t want you to think I’m nagging, but I thought about it for a long time and decided I wanted to tell you some things. I hope you read till the end. First, I want you to understand that you’re still a child. You’re underage. I think you’re a responsible person, but a seventeen-year-old is still a child in the eyes of the world, and in an economic and physical sense. You’re a minor, and while I’m sure there are many ways to look at it, I’m still your guardian—”

  Ding!

  “Whoa!”

  “PS, I’m not mad at you. I’m just confused and worried. Why did you go on a trip all of a sudden without telling me anything? Why Ehime? You’ve never mentioned Ehime, and as far as I know, you don’t necessarily—”

  Sigh. I turn my phone over and set it on the tatami mat as if that will keep it away from me. I’ll read the rest tomorrow.

  “I wish she would hurry up and get a boyfriend or something,” I mutter.

  “Your aunt is single? How old is she?”

  “Around forty, I think.” I remember her birthday party the month before last. She always cries when I sing “Happy Birthday.” “She’s really beautiful, though.”

  I think of her long eyelashes and of how easily she cries. I pick up a piece of taro root and set it on my rice.

  “It’s just the two of us living together. She’s my guardian,” I say before putting the taro root and rice in my mouth.

  “That sounds complicated.”

  “Not at all!” I swallow the savory taro. “But lately I’ve started to wonder if I’m taking up all her free time.”

  “No way!” Chika says, giggling. “That’s the line her ex should say!”

  “You know, you’re right!”

  Now that I think about it, Chika’s got a point. I feel somehow lighter. “I wish she would be more hands off!” I say, laughing.

  “I feel you!”

  Crap. Souta heard all of that. It’s only as I’m finishing my mandarin orange gelatin dessert that I realize he’s in the room with us, and I break out in a cold sweat.

  After dinner, I go with Chika to the kitchen to thank her family (her parents smile and say the same thing she did: “It’s our job!”). I help her wash the mountain of dishes and scrub the bathing area with a deck brush. While we’re working, she asks if I’ve ever dated anyone. I tell her no, which is the truth. “You’re better off that way. Guys are nothing but trouble,” she complains cheerfully. She tells me she’s just started dating someone, but he’s always getting jealous even though he hardly ever texts her, and he’s constantly saying he wants to go somewhere they can be alone, when in fact there’s nothing but places to be alone around here. She says it’s a real hassle, though she sounds happy as she talks. When we’re done with chores, the whole family drinks iced herbal tea prepared by Chika’s mom, and we joke around some more. By the time we slip into the futons laid out in my room, it’s almost two in the morning.

  “Thanks to you, I got to visit that place for the first time in ages,” Chika says sleepily, as if she’s just remembered.

  “Really?”

  “I went to junior high in that village.”

  She must mean the abandoned school, and my heart does a little jump.

  She continues quietly. “There was a landslide a few years back, and the whole village was abandoned.”

  “……”

  “Hey, Suzume?” she says. Her voice is gentle but firm, like she’s made up her mind to say something. “What were you doing back there, getting all muddy? What is that chair you bring around with you?”

  She stops staring at the ceiling and turns to look at me.

  “Who are you?”

  “Um…”

  The electric lights in the room are out. The soft light of the lantern next to our pillow filters through the Japanese paper and glints yellowish off her large eyes. Behind me, Souta is standing still against the wall like a proper chair. I feel his presence there as I search for the right words.

  “That chair—is a keepsake from my mom. But now…”

  What should I say? What can I say? I don’t want to lie, but…

  “…I’m sorry. I can’t really explain.”

  I try hard to think of something, but that’s all that comes out. Chika looks at me silently. Suddenly, a smile crosses over her face, and she lets out a long breath.

  “You must be a magician with all those secrets,” she jokes before rolling onto her back and closing her eyes.

  “But you know, for some reason, I get the feeling you’re doing something important,” she says in a kind voice.

  “…!”

  I almost start crying again. Unable to lie still, I sit up in my futon.

  “Thank you, Chika. You’re right—what I’m doing is important. I think so, too!”

  I’m talking to Souta, against the wall behind me. You’re doing something important. No one knows, and no one sees, but you’re fighting.

  I think back to him all alone, struggling to shut that door in the ruins. It was only yesterday, but it feels like years ago. Thanks to you, I’ve already crossed the sea and been mistaken for a magician. But I’ve also managed to do something very important.

  “Don’t toot your own horn!” Chika laughs. We smile together, like we’ve been doing ever since we met.

  Crossing the Strait

  “Some people just aren’t morning people…,” I complain with a sigh as I brush the kinks out of my hair using the brush Chika lent me.

  “Who are you talking about? Your boyfriend?”

  “I told you I don’t have a boyfriend! It was just a general statement.”

  Sometimes I wish I had a tidy, short haircut like Chika, but a memory of my mom praising my long hair as a child gets in the way, and I can’t bring myself to cut it.

  Chika is brushing her teeth next to me. “When that happens,”—she spits out a mouthful of water—“if you kiss them, they’ll wake up!”

  She smiles knowingly. She sure can turn everything into a brag, I think, more impressed than annoyed.

  “I’ve got to take a shower and get ready for school. You eat breakfast!” Chika says.

  As I’m enjoying another fantastic free meal in the dining room, her little brother, who’s eating with me, suddenly says, “Hey, look! This is amazing!”

  I glance at the TV tuned to the morning news and accidentally inhale a mouthful of rice. Above a caption reading “Cat spotted on Akashi Kaikyo Bridge!” is an image of the big white suspension bridge. The camera zooms in. A white kitten is strolling casually along one of the bridge’s thick cables. The reporter is narrating in a tone that says, This is a harmless, entertaining news piece.

  “It’s unclear how this cat got onto the bridge, but it certainly is bold! A video of the cat recorded inadvertently by a dash cam is trending on social media—”

  “Souta, look, it’s Daijin!” I say after running back to my room. I pick up the kiddie chair and shake it up and down. “Come on, wake up already!”

  Like yesterday, all I’ve gotten in response to multiple good mornings is soft snores and that same old warmth. Souta refuses to wake up. I shake him, then turn him upside down, then tap him, then set him back on the tatami and remove my hands. The chair topples over like a lifeless lump of wood. This isn’t working.

  “Dammit!”

  “If you kiss them, they’ll wake up.” Chika’s knowing voice comes back to me. Maybe… Maybe that wasn’t just a boast. What if it’s a practical little trick to wake people up that a late bloomer like me just doesn’t know about? I grab both sides of the seat and bring my lips toward Souta’s face—well, toward the backrest serving as his face. My first kiss, I think as my lips approach the wood. I close my eyes. My very first kiss…

  “…But he doesn’t have a mouth,” I mumble, opening my eyes. That wasn’t a very good tip.

  “Suzume?”

  Suddenly, Souta is talking to me. I pull my face away. He takes two noisy steps backward.

  “Good morning. Is something the matter?” he says coolly. My cheeks flame, like a hot wind has just blown over them.

  “Look at this! It’s Daijin! What in the world is that cat trying to do?!”

  The slow-to-wake kiddie chair stares at the cat prancing over the suspension bridge. What does it think it’s doing first thing in the morning?! Apparently trying to soothe my anger, Souta says calmly, “Gods are capricious by nature.”

  “Gods?”

  “The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge crosses the strait to Kobe. We have to hurry—”

  “Suzumeee, you’re leaving soon, right?” Chika says from outside the room, knocking on the door. “Have you changed yet?”

  “That looks much better on you than on me!” Chika says, looking me over from head to toe like she did when we first met. I’m wearing beige culottes, a white T-shirt, and an oversize jean jacket. The kiddie chair and my school uniform are in a big sports bag. My hair, which I never did manage to get brushed out, is in a single braid pulled forward over one shoulder. Chika nods approvingly.

  “You stand out in your uniform carrying nothing but that chair. You can keep those clothes and the bag.”

  “Chika…” My nose tingles at her casual, natural generosity. “How can I ever repay you for this?”

  “Don’t worry about that! Just come visit again.”

  Dressed in her sailor uniform, she hugs me in the entryway to the inn.

  “I’ll come—I promise…!”

  I sniffle and hug her tight. She already feels like my best friend. An hour later, as I’m walking along, I suddenly catch the fresh, citrusy smell of the clothes I’m wearing. Ah, that’s the smell of Chika, I think with a pang.

  “Can’t we take the bus?” Souta asks, sounding flummoxed as he looks up at the sky.

  “…The next bus is in six hours,” I say, checking the faded schedule on the wall.

  With a loud splash, a pile of leaves that must have accumulated on the corrugated roof above us comes tumbling down in a rush of water. We huddle in the dim bus-stop hut, breathing in the smell of water and staring hopelessly at the rain.

  After we left Chika and came down the mountain to a road with a decent amount of traffic, we tried hitchhiking. When I looked up the nearest train station on my phone, it turned out to be fairly far away, which meant the shortest route to Kobe was by car. I stood on the edge of the road, next to the rice fields with their profusion of red cluster amaryllis, and timidly stuck out my thumb at passing cars.

  “Suzume, you have to show a little more enthusiasm. Wave your arms or something,” Souta said from inside the bag after about five cars ignored me.

  “What if you went out and stood on the road? Someone might stop out of shock,” I quipped back pointlessly. But the more I thought about it, even if a car did stop for me, a teenage girl, it might not be the kind of car I should get into. Just as I began to reconsider, lightning flashed, rain started pouring down, and I bolted for a nearby bus stop.